CBS All Access has confirmed that Academy Award winning writer Jordan Peele will be the new host of The Twilight Zone update with a special teaser for the third revival of the classic anthology series. Legendary writer/producer Rod Sterling previously held the hosting position for the original 1959-1964 version, while Forest Whitaker hosted the 2002 version. Check out The Twilight Zone‘s first teaser below!
Peele had initially resisted taking the hosting gig, as his face is so well associated with comedy that he worried it would take away from the more serious tone of the show. However, the Get Out director and Oscar-winning screenwriter ultimately decided to take the leap.
“Rod Serling was an uncompromising visionary who not only shed light on social issues of his time, but prophesied issues of ours,” said Peele (via Entertainment Weekly), who was previously announced as producing the revival. “I’m honored to carry on his legacy to a new generation of audiences as the gatekeeper of ‘The Twilight Zone.'”
Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone series will be produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films. Jordan Peele, Simon Kinberg and Marco Ramirez will serve as executive producers for the series and collaborate on the premiere episode. Win Rosenfeld and Audrey Chon will also serve as executive producers. Production begins on the series later this year.
The original The Twilight Zone took viewers to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Created by Rod Serling, it was a journey into a wondrous land of imagination for five years on CBS, from 1959-1964. The godfather of sci-fi series, the show explored humanity’s hopes, despairs, prides and prejudices in metaphoric ways conventional drama could not. In 1983 Steven Spielberg produced a big budget anthology film version, Twilight Zone: The Movie, directed by Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller. The show was revived by CBS in the 1980s and ran for three seasons, helmed by the likes of William Friedkin, Atom Egoyan and Wes Craven. It was revived again on UPN and hosted by Forest Whitaker in 2002 for one season. Another revival was attempted in 2012 with Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), who was to develop, executive produce and direct.
