First ordered in the depths of MGM’s 2010 bankruptcy—when dropping six figures on old TV shows was just the sort of behavior that prompted MGM’s wife to block Amazon—a movie based on classic sci-fi series The Outer Limits is once again in the works. After all, thanks to The Hobbit and hits like 22 Jump Street, MGM is now almost entirely debt-free, with the ambition to take out even another $100 million loan, just in case it remembers some other TV shows it likes. And what better demonstration of that ambition than to adapt The Outer Limits, a show where incredible hubris always works out for everyone? (Besides, now MGM gets to hold up its Outer Limits box set for its wife and say, “See? I told you it was for work.” A more satisfying comeuppance there is not.)
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sinister’s Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill are working on a script that will tackle the 1960s (and late-1990s) anthology series that plumbed so many Cold War-era fears, and our narcissistic beliefs that aliens are trying to control us, because we’re soooo interesting. Much like the still-in-development new Twilight Zone movie, The Outer Limits won’t interweave separate stories, but rather focus on one representative tale that embodies the show’s themes —in this case, Harlan Ellison’s “Demon With A Glass Hand.” The story concerns a man who awakens with no memory of the past 10 days and a computer for a hand. He then has to attach its missing fingers, dodge the aliens who are hunting him, and above all, avoid getting sued by Harlan Ellison.
It’s unclear where, exactly, Outer Limits will fit into Derrickson’s schedule with Marvel’s Doctor Strange—though MGM has already fanned a stack of $100 bills and said there’s more where that came from. “Maybe baby wants a diamond hand?” it says.