Bryan Fuller And Amblin TV Reviving Steven Spielberg’s ‘Amazing Stories’ Anthology Series
At a time when anthology television series such asAmerican Horror Story, True DetectiveandFargoare such hits, it’s surprising that shows likeThe Twilight ZoneandThe Outer Limitsaren’t getting the remake treatment. However, that might change if NBC finds success bringing a familiar anthology series of that kind back to the small screen.
Amazing Storieswas an hour-long weekly sci-fi and fantasy anthology series created and executive produced by Steven Spielberg that told stories of the fantastic, strange and supernatural, and nowPushing DaisiesandHannibalcreator and executive producerBryan Fullerand Amblin TV will bring the show to NBC for a revival.EWreports theAmazing Storiesremake is currently in development at NBC with Fuller writing a pilot for the project in addition to executive producing alongsideUnder the DomeandExtantexecutive producersJustin FalveyandDarryl Frank. And if it’s anything like the original series, this should be something fascinating to watch.Amazing Storiesbegan airing in 1985, running only for two seasons. But in its short time on the air, the show earned 12 Emmy nominations and won five awards. A big part of the success of the series can be attributed to the incredible filmmaking talent that came on board to direct episodes, which will hopefully be a staple of this new iteration.
Directors who were at the helm of episodes ofAmazing StoriesincludeMartin Scorsese(GoodFellas),Joe Dante(Gremlins),Clint Eastwood(American Sniper),Robert Zemeckis(Back to the Future),Irvin Kershner(The Empire Strikes Back),Ken Kwapis(The Office),Tobe Hooper(The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and evenBurt Reynolds.
Steven Spielberg (who isn’t involved in the remake) also directed an Emmy-winning episode calledThe Mission:
Many of those directors hadn’t yet become icons when taking on an episode of the series, though they did have established careers at that point in the 80s. So hopefully NBC and Bryan Fuller can line up some talented filmmakers from the next generation of iconic filmmakers. It would be great to see the likes ofGuillermo del Toro, Edgar Wright, Alfonso Cuaron, Duncan Jones, Rian Johnson, J.J. Abramsand other filmmakers tackle episodes here and there, but the network may not necessarily be able to afford them.
For a bit of nostalgia, here’s the original opening credits forAmazing Stories:
And for those curious, that opening theme is composed by the legendaryJohn Williams. Can they get him to compose a new version, or will another composer be given the gig? We’ll have to wait and see.
Anyone out there interested in thisAmazing Storiesremake?
