Variety sources indicate that writer-director Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight Rises”), who has piled a great deal of cash into the Warner Bros. vaults over the last six years, is now the frontrunner to direct Warner’s big-screen “Twilight Zone” feature.
Non-frontrunner directors apparently talking to the studio about the project include Michael Bay (“Transformers”) and Alfanso Cuaron (“Children of Men”).
Said to be based on a single (as yet undisclosed) episode of the 1959-1964 CBS series, the new script was penned by Jason Rothenberg, who also penned a 2009 Minka Kelly pilot for the CW about young men and women suffering abuse at the hands of D.C. politicians.
The trouble with “Twilight Zone” stories is they don’t typically lend themselves to 100-minute stories. It would be difficult to imagine, for example, that the great episode in which Burgess Meredith broke his glasses would make a good feature. Serling found himself so challenged when CBS expanded the series from 25 minutes to 50 minutes during its fourth season that the series returned to the 25-minute format during its fifth and final season.
Many recent movies, like “Knowing” and “I Am Legend” and “The Box” (the latter two based on a stories by longtime “Twilight Zone” writer Richard Matheson), to say nothing of everything M. Night Shyamalan directed between 1999 and 2008, already feel like big-screen “Twilight Zone” features. So I was wondering how this project might distinguish itself.
The hiring of Nolan, the writer-director behind not only the current Batman franchise but also acclaimed sci-fi movies like “The Prestige” and “Inception,” would certainly get that done.
Find all of Variety’s story on the matter here.
