Warner Brothers and Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way have been developing a Twilight Zone film for some time now. Back in 2009 they hired the writer/director of The Astronaut’s Wife Rand Ravich to write a screenplay for the project, which was then turned over to Jason Rothenberg last October for a rewrite.
The latest draft must be good enough for all involved to want to move forward because Variety is reporting that the studio is now discussing the projct with a number of A-list directors including Christopher Nolan, Michael Bay and Alfonso Cuaron. Additionally, there is a dark horse candidate in the form of Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt, who just earned over $400 million at the box office with his reboot of the studio’s franchise. The trade is also reporting that Harry Potter helmer David Yates had been in contention for the job but that “his prospects have waned.”
Right now, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will land the job.
Reportedly, Nolan is the frontrunner for the job though he has some concerns with the screenplay’s similarity to his own blockbuster Inception. Cuaron is currently wrapping up work on the science fiction thriller Gravity and both he and Wyatt have not committed to their next projects. Bay is also reportedly excited about the script, but is also anxious to get started on a pet project, the competitive bodybuilding black comedy Pain And Gain.
While I’m excited by the number of quality directors (and Michael Bay) being courted for a Twilight Zone film, I have to express some disappointment that the film is going to be a single storyline and not an anthology film, like the 1983 big screen adaption. The strength of the original 1960s television series created by Rod Serling was that its anthology nature allowed for several different types of stories to be told. Greanted, an anthology Zone film with all the directors named above would be potentially incredible and it would be exciting to see all of them working in what would essentially be the short film medium.
