The Twilight Zonemovie is finally starting to see some forward motion with the announcement of Christine Lavaf coming on board to write the screenplay. The project has been in development since 2009 at Warner Bros. and has had Rand Ravich, Anthony Peckham, and Joby Harlold asprevious writersattached, but this is the first major development for the movie since 2013 when it was announced thatJoseph Kosinski(Oblivion) was in talks to direct and that Anthony Peckham would be writing the screenplay.
Varietyreports that Christine Lavaf will take over the reigns and write the newest screenplay for the “in development hell"Twilight Zonemovie. Lavaf has recently sold three original pilots to FX, includingI’Humanwith Nina Jacobsen’s Color Force producing. In addition she was also in the writing room for Legendary’s nextMonsterversemovieGodzilla 2. She has also written or co-written Fringe: Tales From the Fringe for DC Comics. It is unclear in what manner the movie will be presented, but it has been rumored that it could be based off of classic television from the 1960s.
The Twilight Zoneis being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions with his partner Jennifer Davisson Killoran. The production company started in 2004 withThe Assassination of Richard Nixonand has gone on to produceThe Aviator,The Revenant,The Wolf of Wall Street, and the 2016 documentaryBefore the Floodamong other projects. It was announced in 2016 that Appian would be producingThe Twilight Zoneadaptation, but not much has been shared about the project since then.
The Twilight Zoneis an anthology TV series created byRod Serlingand originally aired from 1959 to 1964. The show was revived in the mid eighties as well as 2002 to a mixed response. In 1983John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller directed a big screen adaptation of the anthology style show to mixed reviews. The movie gained negative attention before its release because of a stunt helicopter accident during filming that took the lives of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, Myca Dinh and Shin-Yi Chen. The child actors were hired illegally in violation of a law stating that children could not work late at night and a legal battle ensued where nobody was found to be criminally liable for the accident.
Hopefully Christine Lavaf stays on board to finish the screenplay and we get to seeThe Twilight Zonesometime in the near future. There have been plenty of false starts since 2009, but it appears that Appian Way Productions is intent on getting the project off of the ground. DiCaprio has said in the past that his favorite TV series is theTwilight Zone, so that has to count for something, right? It has been rumored that some of the 92 scripts that Serling wrote could be used for upcoming movie since Warner Bros. owns all of the rights to the completed scripts.
