Anna Daniels
If you’re an AppleTV+ subscriber who’s been slightly underwhelmed by the new streaming service’s lineup of original programming, here’s a show that just might turn the tide. Steven Spielberg is executive producing a modernized version of Amazing Stories, his sci-fi anthology series that originally aired in the 1980s, and the first full trailer has arrived. Check it out below.
Amazing Stories Trailer
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sa8EDeb3eQ?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
This show clearly has tons of potential, but considering the pedigree of the people involved, I feel like this trailer should have had me pumping my fist and eager to press play on the first episode. Instead, I find myself sort of shrugging my shoulders and hoping for the best. Fingers crossed that it’s just a mediocre trailer and not fully representative of what we’ll see when the series premieres.
Amazing Stories has had an exceptionally long road to the small screen. Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) tried to get a reboot up and running at NBC way back in 2015, before getting hired to bring it to AppleTV+ in 2017. But Fuller has…let’s say a complicated history working in television, so he left a few months later and was ultimately replaced by Once Upon a Time and Lost veterans Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis. The writing duo guided this series across the finish line, hiring directors Chris Long, Michael Dinner, Susanna Fogel, Mark Mylod, and Sylvain White to tackle the new episodes.
Steven Spielberg’s original Amazing Stories anthology lasted two seasons, running from 1985 until its cancellation in 1987 and winning five total Emmys. Spielberg has lent his name to some pretty iffy television programs over the years, but this was a personal project for him and instead of just slapping his name on it as an executive producer, he was directly involved: he created the show, wrote the stories for 18 out of the 45 episodes, and directed two of them as well. (While he doesn’t appear to be quite as involved in this reboot, let’s hope we’ll be able to feel his fingerprints on the final product.) Back then, Spielberg used the anthology format as a way to lure in tons of incredible talent both in front of and behind the camera: the original series featured episodes directed by people like Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Lesli Linka Glatter, Robert Zemeckis, Tobe Hooper, Brad Bird, and Danny DeVito, just to name a few, and it starred actors like Kevin Costner, Mark Hamill, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Lloyd, Gregory Hines, John Lithgow, Kiefer Sutherland, and many more.
Here’s the official synopsis:
From visionary executive producers Steven Spielberg and Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz, this reimagining of the classic anthology series transports everyday characters into worlds of wonder, possibility, and imagination.
Amazing Stories debuts on AppleTV+ on March 6, 2020.
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