Sequels to 1959 and 1960 episodes.

[Dave]

The Twilight Zone is to shoot a sequel to a classic 1959 episode with the original cast of Bill Mumy and Cloris Leachman in the same roles. They are going to update another classic episode too.

SciFi Wire report -- Producers of UPN's The Twilight Zone told SCI FI Wire that the show next week will begin shooting a sequel to the classic 1959 episode "It's a Good Life," in which a 6-year-old Billy Mumy sent people to the cornfield, with a now-middle-aged Mumy reprising the role of Anthony Fremont and Cloris Leachman again playing his mother. In another twist, Mumy's real-life daughter, Liliana, will play Fremont's daughter, who also has paranormal abilities, in the new episode, called "It's Still a Good Life," the producers said.

"We just signed Cloris Leachman [to reprise the role] as his mother," executive producer Ira Steven Behr said in an interview. "We have Bill playing Anthony Fremont, [the] same character. He's going to be wishing people into the cornfields. And we meet his daughter in real life, Liliana Mumy, who's an actress who was in The Santa Clause 2. She's going to be playing his daughter on the show, who is also going to have those Fremont powers. So that's going to be a really exciting show, and I know the network is really excited about it." The episode is slated to air in February.

Behr added that the show will soon update another classic episode, Rod Serling's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," this time starring Andrew McCarthy. The original episode, in which residents of a suburban neighborhood turn on each other, reflected the 1960s paranoia about communism. "In this case, it's the fear of terrorism," Behr said. "The big change in the show is ... that what was cutting-edge at the time was to suspect each other. ... Is your neighbor a communist? And in this one, ... instead of the whole neighborhood falling apart, it's everyone banding together to blame this one family. So it's kind of different. ... This is a show about the scapegoat. And I think that's what we do nowadays. We have a lot of problems that can't be solved, and we look for convenient scapegoats."

Added executive producer Pen Densham, "It doesn't go away, although I think in our world there's a whole new set of politics that are going on that makes the story relevant again. What Rod Serling did was to speak about issues through allegory or parable, and I think this is a parable that's just sort of come back again to be reviewed." The Twilight Zone airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

 

[tabuno]

Remakes and Updates - Where's The Originality?

While remakes and updates sound cute and for a brief time curious, such efforts are doomed to failure in that The Twilight Zone (now that I've seen a few reruns of the black and white original from the 50s during the past month), really raise the question, "Has the originality and unique twist that gave The Twilight Zone" its greatness finished?" While I had higher hopes for the new series, it hasn't been able to consistently achieve the special spark of "imagination" that the Twightlight Zone's Rod Serling referred to with every opening introduction. The new "The Outer Limits" series has been able to go a little higher, though it too seems to be slowing down now.

 

[Tabitha]

I am very excited about the "It's a good life" sequel. That is my all time favourite episode of the Twilight Zone, and I can still remember seeing it for the first time as a little girl and being horrified!

The update of "The Monters..." could be very good if it is handled properly. Not many tv shows today are saying much about the new fear of terrorism - science fiction as a genre used to be a clever way of producing social commentary fit for mass consumption, with many horror and sf of the 50s and 60s doubling as allegories for the fear of communism and the danger of McCarthyist mob rule. I hope this new episode treads this ground, rather than the "Independence Day 2" rallying to the flag type thing.

 

[Dave]

Those are the two sides of the argument, I guess. It will be good to have a new slant on the old stories, but it also smacks of desperation and unoriginality. I'm not sure which of those two camps I belong to really.

 

[Tabitha]

Not having seen any of the new Twilight Zone episodes it is hard to judge which route they might follow.

From what I can tell the new episodes are not exactly universally adored. I don't see this series lasting that long from what I have heard.

There is also mention of this on www.aintitcool.com - if you are a fan of any incarnation of this show please go and read the talkback section after the article, the reminiscences there are great, brings back a lot of memories of half-remembered eps.

 

[paul l]

I loved the twilight zone it scared the pants off me as a kid. We all loose this innocense as we get older, i dont think sequels will match up to the originals. I wait and will see.

 

[Robert M. Blevins]

Ahh...
But this isn't the FIRST remake of this particular episode!
Remember 'Twilight Zone - The Movie'?
That's the one with three (I think) episodes remade into a film. One starred Vic Morrow as a bigot who gets what he deserves. (Morrow and two children were killed during filming by a helicopter that crashed while doing an overhead shot) The second episode remade the original about the monster on the wing of the jetliner. The third episode was the one under discussion. In it, Billy Mumy gets a bit part standing at a pinball machine...

 

[Dave]

Please note the date of the original post. If it hasn't been made yet, it's not likely to happen, though as Robert says, one's already been remade once.

 

[logan_run]

I wish they did a sequrel to people are alike all over.