The Twilight Zone (1985) is the first of two revivals of
Rod Serling's acclaimed 1950/60s television series
of the same name. It ran for two seasons on
CBS before producing a final season for
syndication.
Series history
It was Serling's decision to sell his share of the series back to the network that eventually allowed for a
Twilight Zone revival. As an in-house production,
CBS stood to earn more money producing
The Twilight Zone than it could by purchasing a new series produced by an outside company. Even so, the network was slow to consider a revival, shooting down offers from the original production team of Rod Serling and
Buck Houghton and later from American filmmaker
Francis Ford Coppola. Their hesitation stemmed from concerns familiar to
the original series:
Twilight Zone had never been the breakaway hit CBS wanted, so they should not expect it to do better in a second run. "We were looking at the success of the original series in syndication and the enormous popularity of the
Steven Spielberg films," said CBS program chief
Harvey Shepard. "Many of them (such as
E.T. or
Poltergeist) deal with elements of the show. Perhaps the public is ready for it again."
Despite the lukewarm response to
The Movie, Spielberg's theatrical homage to the original series, CBS gave
The New Twilight Zone a
greenlight in 1984 under the supervision of
Carla Singer, then Vice President of Drama Development. "
Twilight Zone was a series I always liked as a kid,"...
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