The Twilight Zone Reboot Officially Begins Production
The Twilight Zone has entered a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.
CBS All Access recently announced that the first season of the upcoming reboot series officially began production on Monday, October 1 — almost 59 years to the day that the original Twilight Zone series premiered.
To mark the occasion and keep fans up-to-date on the behind-the-scenes happenings, the subscription-based streamer released a video announcing the start of production. The footage stitches together clips from several famous Twilight Zone episodes, like "Living Doll" from November 1963, "The Invaders" from January 1961, and "To Serve Man" from March 1962.
After a booming voice reminds us of the magic and mystery of The Twilight Zone, Get Out director Jordan Peele begins narrating in the background, stepping into the spot Rod Serling, the ineffable creator, host, narrator of the original Twilight Zone, occupied from 1959 to 1964. Peele also follows after Charles Aidman narrated the Twilight Zone revival series from 1985 to 1987, after Robin Ward stepped up as the new narrator of that same reboot from 1988 to 1989, and after Forest Whitaker served as the narrator of the second revival series from 2002 to 2003.
"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind," says Peele in the video, reciting the opening narration Serling delivered at the start of each episode of The Twilight Zone season 2. As that mini-monologue goes, viewers will "journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination" in the new Twilight Zone series, which the announcement video describes as the "reimagining of a worldwide phenomenon."
Though the announcement video doesn't reveal what Peele will look like as the new narrator of The Twilight Zone, it does give us an idea of what he'll sound like — and that's just as important, if not more so.
The footage ends with an unnamed crew member slapping a clapperboard to mark the very first take of the very first scene of the Twilight Zone reboot. It's blurry, but the background shows the scene's set, which appears to be the inside of a restaurant or a diner, with a woman in a yellow dress standing at a counter.
Check it out above.
In an age where remakes and reboots are more common than the cold, CBS is under substantial pressure to deliver a rock-solid reimagining that not only honors its predecessor but is also interesting, exciting, and entertaining in its own right. Peele is in a similar situation, needing to live up to Serling's reputation and shine in a new chapter of his career. After saying sayonara to acting earlier this year, a decision motivated in part by a past offer to play the poop emoji in The Emoji Movie, Peele has made moves to forge a new path and establish a new brand — as both a formidable force in filmmaking and as a serious talent on television.
Based on the taste of the new Twilight Zone we got here, we're confident Peele can flawlessly execute his responsibility of taking viewers to the land of "both shadow and substance, of things and ideas" in 2019.
Executive produced by Peele and Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg, Twilight Zone reboot is currently filming in Vancouver, British Columbia. The series doesn't yet have an official release date.