TWILIGHT ZONE Creator Rod Serling To Get Film Biopic

Rod Serling is one of my heroes. Long before I realised he created the show, wrote many of the episodes or even before I ever knew his name, Rod Serling was always the gate-keeper to a wondrous, fascinating and often terrifying place known as The Twilight Zone. He was both the voice of reason and of caution - the figurehead for a dark and sinister place where the flaws of humanity were so often projected in pathetic, weak-minded and lost souls. I've loved the show for as long as I can remember watching television and The Twilight Zone is the pinnacle of the format for me. With the newly released Blu-rays here in the U.K, I'm currently going through each episode one at a time and at one point I did plan on reviewing them all for the site and one day I do hope to give that a bash if for no other reason than it pains me so few today have seen much of the series. Most know it only for it's iconic and much parodied theme. There was so much more to the show and indeed so much more to the figure behind it. Rod Serling was an interesting man who lived a full life which included a distinguished military career, a never-ending and bitter war against censorship, created two iconic t.v. shows and also happened to be the brainchild behind the most iconic ending in film history for Planet of the Apes. I'm truly surprised it's taken this long for a biopic of his life to be made but Wall Street and W. writer Stanley Weiser, who himself has wrote about flawed humans in a flawed world more than once, is right now putting together a screenplay for just that. Isn't that just exciting? Rookie director Andrew Meieran would helm, a real estate guy who I imagine his love for Serling/Twilight Zone has brought him to filmmaking and his financial clout has allowed Bureau of Moving Pictures to buy the life rights and I can't blame him. The project has the backing of the late Serling's wife Carol, who will produce after allowing to purchase the life rights to the famous T.V. icon. The whole thing is in the early stages and no title is even being spoken of yet but I'm really gunning for this one to come through. It seems annually around my birthday on July 25th news of Leonardo DiCaprio's (who owns the rights to the series by the way) desire to bring a Twilight Zone anthology movie to the big screen re-emerge only to then die for another year and it's funny this time it's a biopic of Serling that has raised it's head in the same month. You know, I just wonder if Twilight Zone obsessive DiCaprio gets the fancy to pitch himself for the lead role? Sure he looks little like Serling but then he doesn't look much like J. Edgar Hoover either but Clint Eastwood cast him for his upcoming biopic. DiCaprio could seriously do the business here as Serling. He has the posture, the assured confidence, the beady eyes and the sense of intelligence that Serling always brought to the episodes. Sure in an ideal world I would rather DiCaprio got off his ass and commissioned a new t.v. series and hired the best sci-fi and comic book writers to pen individual stand-alone episodes for a new anthology series that could guest star the best of Hollywood's t.v. and film elite but as that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon, him staring in a Rod Serling biopic would be a cool second choice. Fingers crossed this one makes it...