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Apparently MGM is Quietly Developing an 'Outer Limits' Movie

by Ethan Anderton
August 2, 2010

Though the financial woes of the troubled MGM studio have stopped any forward movement on The Hobbit and another James Bond film, apparently that's not stopping them from working on an adaptation straight out of the "WTF?!" department. Variety reports MGM has quietly been developing an adaptation of the the 1960's sci-fi series The Outer Limits with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (who have worked on four out of the seven Saw flicks and the Project Greenlight winning script Feast) writing the script. Even more baffling, the deal for the film is somewhere around the mid-six figures. Where are they getting this money?

MGM is still figuring out what to do with a enormous amount of debt (they just got their sixth extension on payments to 140 different creditors), so the fact they're spending money on something as risky as a feature adaptation of an old TV show, no matter how classic or recognized, is stupid right now. Especially if they're choosing to pay for this project instead of trying to get The Hobbit and James Bond out of this bad situation. Of course MGM says the writers were hired before the financial woes began, but the duo contends they they didn't even start working on this until mid-July. Someone (and not Lucille Ball) has some explaining to do!

Anyway, "The Outer Limits" (as you all know it) originally aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965 as an anthology of stand alone science fiction episodes similar to "Twilight Zone" (with an equally killer intro) but with less whimsy, more action/danger and of course "awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits." The series was also revived on Showtime from 1995 to 1999, then on Sci-Fi Channel (before it was known as SyFy) from 1999 until its cancellation in 2002. While a feature film adaptation may be quite interesting, Twilight Zone: The Movie doesn't really have a huge fan-base anymore, and I can see this adaptation having similar results.

However, if this adaptation ever gets off the ground (assuming MGM removes their head from their ass), I wouldn't be adverse to this giving way to an all-new adaptation of "The Twilight Zone" in feature film form as well. Segments from the '83 adaptation came from Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller, and I'd love to see another group of talented filmmakers from a new generation take a crack at it. My choice of directors would include Edgar Wright, Guillermo Del Toro, J.J. Abrams and Peter Jackson. Yeah, that sounds good. As for Outer Limits, MGM needs to get out of their hole first, so I won't hold my breath.

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