Ben Stiller and Leonardo DiCaprio Are Rebooting THE TWILIGHT ZONE as a Feature Film
It looks like Ben Stiller is reprotedly stepping back behind the camera and into The Twilight Zone. According to TheInsneider, Stiller is in talks to direct a new feature-length reboot of Rod Serling’s iconic sci-fi anthology series for Warner Bros., with Leonardo DiCaprio producing through his Appian Way banner.
The guy who gave us Tropic Thunder and Zoolander, and more recently, the unsettling brilliance of Severance, may end up directing a Twilight Zone movie. This might’ve been surprising news before Stiller made Severance, but his work on that show proves he’s more than capable of blending surrealism and paranoia. It’s very much in the spirit of Serling’s world.
DiCaprio, meanwhile, has been attached to a Twilight Zone reboot for over a decade. His company Appian Way, known for backing prestige dramas like The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon has been developing a feature based on Serling’s scripts since 2008.
Warner Bros. was reportedly negotiating with Serling’s estate to secure rights to specific episodes with the goal of telling “one continuing story line based on one or more episodes,” which would distinguish it from the 1983 anthology film.
That ‘80s movie, Twilight Zone: The Movie, was broken into segments directed by Hollywood legends including John Landis, Steven Spielberg, George Miller, and Joe Dante. It adapted several classic episodes such as “Kick the Can,” “It’s a Good Life,” and the terrifying “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
The new take, if it moves forward, sounds like it will be a single narrative thread instead of a segmented format, which is much more interesting.
And this isn't the first attempt at a modern Twilight Zone movie. Over the years, filmmakers like Matt Reeves (The Batman) and Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) have tried to crack the code.
Reeves’ version, written by Jason Rothenberg, centered on “a test pilot who winds up breaking the speed of light; when he puts down his craft, he discovers that he’s landed a bit late for supper — 96 years late,” hinting at a possible remake of the 1961 time-travel episode “The Odyssey of Flight 33.”
That version fizzled out, and the franchise instead returned to television with Jordan Peele’s CBS All Access reboot, which ran for two seasons before being quietly canceled.
With Warner Bros. back in the mix, DiCaprio still onboard, and Stiller possibly directing, this iteration might finally stick. It’s too early to say how much of Serling’s voice will remain, but I imagine the film will lean into the eerie social commentary that made the original series so influential.
But if Stiller brings the same atmospheric tension from Severance and DiCaprio channels his obsession with cerebral, high-concept storytelling, this might actually be the trip to the fifth dimension that fans have been waiting for.