Everyone is embracing anthology series these days, though today’s aren’t quite like the ones of yore, and it has become more about changes over seasons rather than episodes. So your complete surprise may vary in finding out there’s apparently a planned remake of the (somewhat) classic horror series Night Gallery, and what’s more, it’ll have Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski on board. This could be incredible…or at least weird enough to keep people’s attention.
News of this project’s early stages of development came from Straczynski himself, who was promoting his many creations at Comic-Con this past weekend. He shared with the audience that he was working on a revival of Night Gallery, according to Comic Book Resources, but I guess he didn’t say much more about it beyond that. When you get down to it, how much could possibly be said about a reboot for a series whose episodes were all completely different?
Night Gallery was the creation of macabre maestro Rod Serling, who kicked this series off several years after his other genre show The Twilight Zone went off the air. I don’t think you’d find many people who think that Night Gallery is better than Twilight Zone on the whole, but it did utilize a lot of famous actors of the day to tell three seasons’ worth of occasionally gripping tales of terror. Here are the opening credits for those who need a square-filled reminder.
Straczynski, whose pre-Babylon 5 genre cred was already earned by writing episodes of the 1980s Twlight Zone remake (as well as episodes for the He-Man series and The Real Ghostbusters) – is apparently working on several new things. Beyond trying to get a second season for his and the Wachowski siblings’ Netflix Original sci-fi drama Sense8, he’s working on an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars novels, a secret reboot of a British TV series from decades ago, and one of the projects he was promoting at Comic-Con: the graphic novel Flash: Earth One for DC Comics. We’ll have to see where Night Gallery falls on his to-do list.
We almost got a reboot on The CW of Tales from the Darkside recently from horror author Joe Hill, but the network passed on it. We’re crossing our fingers – and those of “The Doll” – for this Night Gallery revival to be good enough to move forward in the future. And if that Twilight Zone remake wanted to stay away for a few more years, that’d be fine, too.
