Review Tales From the Crypt (1989)

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
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Tales from the Crypt, sometimes titled HBO's Tales from the Crypt, is an American horror anthology television series that ran from June 10, 1989 to July 19, 1996, on the premium cable channel HBO for seven seasons with a total of 93 episodes.

The title is based on the 1950s EC Comics series of the same name and most of the content originated in that comic or the other EC Comics of the time (The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, and Two-Fisted Tales).

The show was produced by HBO.

Because it was aired on HBO, a premium cable television channel, it was one of the few anthology series to be allowed to have full freedom from censorship by network standards and practices.

As a result, HBO allowed the series to contain content that had not appeared in most television series up to that time, such as graphic violence, profanity, sexual activity and nudity.

The show is subsequently edited for such content when broadcast in syndication or on basic cable.

While the series began production in the United States, in the final season filming moved to Britain, resulting in episodes which revolved around British characters.




 
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Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
The “Tales from the Crypt” Reboot Has Died


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TNT and TBS president Kevin Reilly has confirmed that filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s proposed reboot of the “Tales from the Crypt” franchise has been scrapped.

Reilly says the death of plans to bring back the Crypt-Keeper led horror anthology series was due to a tangled web of rights issues. He tells Deadline:

“That one got really caught up in a complete legal mess unfortunately with a very complicated underlying rights structure. 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 but in the meantime, Ridley Scott had come up, who has so much creative enthusiasm.”

The reference to Scott is with a science fiction-based block of programming the network hopes to launch in 2018 which Scott will shepherd.

That will replace the horror-themed block which Shyamalan was to see and which the ‘Crypt’ reboot was to serve as the main anchor for.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Tales from the Crypt” May Eventually Rise


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In very early 2016 came the announcement from TBS and TNT entertainment president Kevin Reilly of a reboot of HBO’s early 1990s “Tales From The Crypt” franchise. Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan was to steer the anthology series with each episode focusing on a new story.

Then in April came word that the project had stalled and seemed to be effectively dead due to complications over the rights. A statement issued at the time said TNT and others had been pursuing a solution for more than a year. While some progress had been made, it was apparently nowhere near enough to proceed.

Part of the complications is due to the original comic book being sold to various producers and creators over the years. Talking about it this past week at the Television Critics Association press tour, Reilly says:

“Its been fun with lawyers, it’s been really fun. 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.”

Instead, TNT is turning its attention towards Ridley Scott’s planned weekly block of sci-fi programming for its genre product. No dates for that have been set as yet.
 

Doctor Omega

Member: Rank 10
“Tales from the Crypt” Reboot Is Dead


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Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has confirmed that his reboot of “Tales From the Crypt” will not be happening.

Shyamalan was working with TNT who were planning to use the anthology series revival to anchor a whole night of horror in its programming block. Speaking with Digital Spy this week, Shyamalan says there’s just too many legal hurdles for the project to overcome:

“I think it’s dead. We tried everything that we could. That was so mired in people that had rights to it… constantly mired from the original comic books to the people that did the original show and that was a very contentious era for that show and who was involved and all the stuff that had nothing to do with me, a generation before me. I begged them, ‘Please just give me the rights, we’ll do it this way, you’re going to be really happy’. But it didn’t work out that way and here we are.”

A pilot for “Time of Death” was ordered and development was also underway on “Creatures,” shows which were to be a part of the horror block. No word so far on the fate of those two series.
 
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