The Twilight Zone Reboot Gets A New Writer
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The Twilight Zone movie has been in development for a few years with directors like Matt Reeves at one time attached to direct the new reboot film. There’s no telling when the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced The Twilight Zone movie will be released, Warner Bros is pushing the reset button on the entire project. The movie studio is starting again at square one with a new director in Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Tron: Legacy), as Warner Bros will also bring on a new screenwriter to pen a new screenplay tailor made for Kosinski’s sensibilities and input.
According to Variety, Warner Bros hired screenwriter Aron Eli Coleite to lay down the foundation for the new Twilight Zone movie. It is also reported that the new film will be one central story instead of an anthology film like the original Twilight Zone movie in 1983. The original movie featured four different stories, or vignettes, and a wrap-around narrative from directors John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and Mad Max director George Miller.
When the reboot film was first in development a few years ago, it was also going to be a single narrative movie from screenwriter Joby Harold (Edge of Tomorrow), which was described as: “a test pilot who winds up breaking the speed of light; when he puts down his craft, he discovers that he’s landed a bit late for supper — 96 years late.” There’s no telling if this story will end up anywhere in the new Twilight Zone movie, but it’s highly doubtful. Writers Anthony Peckham (Sherlock Holmes) and Jason Gothenburg (Proximity Effect) later worked on the script too.
While Joseph Kosinski is now attached to The Twilight Zone, it’s unclear when he would start filming the new reboot. Kosinski has two projects in development at Disney with the Tron 3 sequel film and The Black Hole remake. Tron 3 could go into production as early as 2014, so it’s unlikely we’ll see The Twilight Zone in theaters until sometime in 2016 or 2017. As for The Black Hole, this is another project that has the same uncertainty as The Twilight Zone.
Kosinski is also developing a new science fiction TV series for the cable network AMC called Ballistic City. Kosinski is working with Pacific Rim co-writer Travis Beacham to bring the sci-fi/crime genre TV series to air. Ballistic City is set in the future and on a traveling spaceship, as it centers on an organized crime syndicate. The series is described as Chinatown meets Blade Runner while voyaging on the Battlestar Galactica spaceship.
Aron Eli Coleite is a TV and comic book writer making a transition from the small screen to the big one. Coleite worked on the superhero TV series Heroes for NBC in 2009, while he also worked on the short-lived mockumentary thriller TV series The River for ABC in 2012. His feature film debut was the apocalyptic drama The End for director Drew Berrymore and he followed it up with the forthcoming When First We Were Gods film adaptation for Warner Bros. First We Were Gods is set in a world where immortality can be bought and follows a man who attempts to murder his immortal wife so that his mortal mistress can take her place.
Returning to The Twilight Zone, with a top visual director like Joseph Kosinski on board with a solid screenwriter in Aron Eli Coleite and the name recognition of Leonardo DiCaprio attached as the film’s producer, it’s easy to see why The Twilight Zone could be one of the top up-and-coming science fiction film projects on the near future.
