TV
“Tales From the Crypt” Rights Issues a Complicated “Nightmare”
The “twist” ending is that we’ll probably never see “Tales From the Crypt” back on television (I’m fine with this so long as I get the HBO episodes in HD one of these days).
Last year, TNT told Bloody Disgusting that rights issues have delayed their “Tales From the Crypt” revival, which was to be part of an M. Night Shyamalan curated horror block. In August 2016 TNT president Kevin Reilly said to expect the show in the fourth quarter of 2017. After small optimism, Reilly told Deadline back in June that they’re moving on from the project and instead focusing on Ridley Scott’s new anthology series.
“That one got really caught up in a complete legal mess unfortunately with a very complicated underlying rights structure,” he had explained. “We lost so much time, so I said, ‘Look, I’m not waiting around four years for this thing’. Maybe that will come back around…”
Reilly had more to say today, explaining that they wouldn’t have even announced the project had they known how complicated and screwed up the rights were.
“It’s been fun with lawyers, it’s been really fun,” Reilly sarcastically stated. “We did not know from the get-go or else we would not have announced it and made a big deal out of it. But in fact, there were rights. It is among the most — if not the most — complicated rights structure I’ve ever seen in my career, and we had no idea as we got into it. It became a nightmare. So we said, ‘Fine.’ If and when this gets cleaned up, we’ll revisit.”
“Tales From the Crypt” – part of TNT’s planned Horror Block, which was to also include “Time of Death” and “Creatures” – was greenlit back in April 2016 as they were ramping up an initial 10-episode order of the anthology series that would have reinvented the Crypt Keeper, based on the original EC Comics.
The project was announced as a new block of terror and suspense that was to be curated by Shyamalan, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Sixth Sense, Signs and Unbreakable, and executive producer of the the Fox series “Wayward Pines.”
The block was said to feature both short and long-form storytelling, led by the “Tales From the Crypt” anthology series, executive-produced by Shyamalan, his partner at Blinding Edge Pictures, Ashwin Rajan; Endgame’s James Stern; and Aloris Entertainment’s John Santilli and Dan McKinnon.
The back half of “Chucky” Season 3 will bring three more episodes to the table in the coming weeks, with “Panic Room” (Season 3, Episode 6) set to air this Wednesday, April 17.
SYFY has provided us with a sneak peek clip from the new episode this afternoon, wherein a wheelchair-bound Chucky shares his renewal of purpose with Henry. Check it out below.
“Everyone dies, kid. Some of us more than once. But I realize now, the point is, to make a difference while we’re here. To leave a mark,” a wheezing, coughing Chucky explains to Henry.
In the mid-season premiere last week, a dying Chucky placed a call to an imprisoned Tiffany, wherein Tiffany encouraged the killer doll to go out in a blaze of glory. That advice is sure to make these final three episodes of “Chucky” Season 3 quite explosive, as Chucky has nothing left to lose. And he wants to remind the world that he’s the greatest serial killer of all time.
But is old age really going to be the thing that kills off Chucky once and for all? Or will he ultimately find a way to defeat death one more time? We’ll find out in the coming weeks…
Watch new episodes of “Chucky” on Wednesdays at 10/9c on SYFY and USA Network. If you miss them when they premiere, new episodes will be streaming on Peacock on Thursdays.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
Spring 2024 Horror Preview: 12 Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss
Blumhouse and Lionsgate Join Forces for Brand New ‘The Blair Witch Project’ Movie!
The ‘Scary Movie’ Spoof Franchise Is Getting a Reboot at Paramount!
‘The Omen’ Franchise Ranking: All Six Movies from Worst to Best
