“You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!” During the late 1950s, these words spoken by Rod Serling at the onset of The Twilight Zone were enough to strike fear in the heart of any viewer. As a fan of pulp fiction stories, Serling created the anthology series as a unique way to address the themes of racism, war, and human nature. The Twilight Zone initially ran on CBS between 1959 and 1964.
The episodes included genres such as fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and psychological thriller, often concluding with an unexpected twist and usually a moral. While Serling wrote the bulk of the episodes, authors such as Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Earl Hamner, Jr., George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, Reginald Rose, and Jerry Sohl also contributed. The original series contains 156 episodes, featured across five seasons. While episodes like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” offered commentary on social issues, “I Dream of Genie” and “The Masks” were fables speaking on philosophical choices.
The widespread success of the series eventually led to a feature film, radio series, comic books, magazine, and various other spinoffs, including two revival television series. Twilight Zone: The Move was produced by Steven Spielberg in 1983 and starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Vic Morrow, and Scatman Crothers. Serling also novelized several of his original scripts, which were published in the anthologies Stories from the Twilight Zone, More Stories from the Twilight Zone, and New Stories from the Twilight Zone. Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida and Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris both feature an attraction based on the original Twilight Zone series – The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Did you know the door into the Twilight Zone is about to open once more? In December 2017, CBS All Access announced a third revival of The Twilight Zone series. CBS Television Studios is producing the series, in association with Monkeypaw Productions and Genre Films. Jordan Peele, Marco Ramirez, and Simon Kinberg will serve as executive producers alongside Win Rosenfeld and Audrey Chon.
There is currently no release date for the new series.
