The Twilight Zone reboot had to figure out how to distinguish itself from Black Mirror

Entertainment Weekly

Executive producers Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg knew there would be inevitable comparisons between their CBS All Access series and Charlie Brooker's Emmy-winning Netflix anthology, which was inspired by the original Twilight Zone. So they made it a point of establishing one rule when choosing scripts. “One of the questions that comes early on when you’re thinking of doing The Twilight Zone is: In a Black Mirror world, what is the show?” says Peele. “Black Mirror is an absolute masterpiece, and we wouldn’t have moved forward with our show if we didn’t identify what is unique to Black Mirror and what is unique to Twilight Zone. One of the easy rules that we made for ourselves is that we don’t have to explore technology — Twilight Zone covers everything else the imagination can think of. Black Mirror is f*cking nailing the dystopic state of technology and how mankind fails when submitting to it. I appreciate the darkness of Black Mirror. I think Twilight Zone has a darkness, but it has a spectrum of tone in terms of how it’s meant to make you feel at the end.” Kinberg adds: "We’re all huge fans of Black Mirror, so there’s that going in. We don’t feel nervous about competing with Black Mirror — we feel daunted enough about being compared to the original Twilight Zone. But we are aware that there could be a comparison. Black Mirror stakes out different territory because it really is so focused on modern technology. We’re really much more focused on moral, social justice, political issues that don’t necessarily rely on new technology." ALSO: How The Twilight Zone re-recreated the original's classic opening sequence.