Just in from The Hollywood Reporter, three additional stars have been cast in an episode of the upcoming reboot of The Twilight Zone from Jordan Peele; Searching‘s John Cho, Allison Tolman from FX’s Fargo and The Predator‘s Jacob Tremblay.
All three have signed on to star in the episode titled “The Wunderkind.” Their roles in the episode and the plot are all being kept tightly under wraps.
They join a growing cast that also includes Adam Scott (Big Little Lies), Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) and Sanaa Lathan (Nappily Ever After), whose roles are also a secret for the time being.
Cho, who in recent years has taken on more dramatic roles than his early days in the Harold & Kumar franchise, has grown to be in successful projects such as J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek franchise as Hikaru Sulu, Fox’s horror series Sleepy Hollow and The Exorcist and the 2018 thriller Searching, which scored rave reviews from both critics and audiences and was a box office hit.
Tolman broke out in 2015 when she starred in the FX television adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ classic film, Fargo, for which she was nominated for both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her performance.
Tremblay has become one of Hollywood’s fastest up-and-coming child actors following his breakout performance in the acclaimed 2015 drama Room, for which he won several awards, and has starred in a variety of films since from the well-received drama/comedy Wonder alongside Julia Roberts (Homecoming) and Owen Wilson (Cars franchise) and the action sci-fi blockbuster The Predator.
Peele will serve as the show’s newest host, making him the third person to do so for The Twilight Zone. Previous versions were hosted by original series writer and producer Rod Sterling for the 1959 to 1964 version and Forest Whitaker for the 2002 continuation.
The upcoming series will be produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films. Peele, Kinberg and Marco Ramirez will be executive producers for the series and collaborate on the premiere episode. Win Rosenfeld and Audrey Chon will also serve as executive producers.
Since it premiered in the late 1950’s, The Twilight Zone has maintained its place in pop culture including reruns on SyFy for New Year’s Eve and the Disney theme park attraction, The Tower of Terror.
Leading each episode with his distinctive voice, Serling would take viewers to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. It was a journey into a mysterious land of imagination for five seasons on CBS, from 1959 to 1964. In its fourth season, episodes were extended to a full hour in length, compared to 30 minutes in all the other seasons. As the godfather of all sci-fi shows, the series explored humanity’s hopes, despairs, prides and prejudices in metaphoric ways conventional drama was unable to.
In 1983 Steven Spielberg produced a big-budget anthology film version, titled Twilight Zone: The Movie, directed by he, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller for the film’s episodes.
The series was revived by CBS in the 1980’s and ran for three seasons. Directors for this series included William Friedkin, Atom Egoyan and Wes Craven. It was revived again on UPN and hosted by Forest Whitaker in 2002 for a single season.
Another revival was attempted in 2012 with Bryan Singer (Bohemian Rhapsody), who was to develop, executive produce and direct but this did not come to fruition.
The new series arrives in 2019 on CBS All Access!
