TNT Green-Lights "Tales from the Crypt" Reboot
by Megan Vick
Apr 14, 2016


TNT announced Thursday that it has officially green-lit 10 episodes of "Tales from the Crypt" for its upcoming horror block curated by director and producer M. Night Shyamalan.

The network announced in January that it was working with Shyamalan to create a horror block of programming, which "Tales from the Crypt" will now anchor.

The 10-episode anthology series will be based on the original EC Comics, not the HBO series that ran for seven seasons from 1989 to 1996. A newly invented Crypt Keeper will guide viewers through each episode.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/tnt-green-lights-tales-from-the-crypt-reboot/

Not a fan of this show! Sort of blend between Twight Light Zone and Friday The 13th! If you like twisted horror drama with a laugh at the end, then go and watch it!

TNT’s "Tales from the Crypt" is Officially Dead
by Brad Miska
June 1, 2017


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.

But now he’s singing a different tune. After small optimism, Reilly tells Deadline 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. 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.”





"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 M. Night Shyamalan. 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.

http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3440105/tnts-tales-crypt-officially-dead/

What a shame. Would've loved to see John Kassir reprise his role and the guest stars returning.

What a shame. Would've loved to see John Kassir reprise his role and the guest stars returning.

If it had gone forward, it's doubtful John Kassir would have reprised his role as M. Night had different plans for a new Crypt Keeper. Also sounded like it wasn't going to be an actual anthology series, but each season would be the story...basically like every other horror themed show on TV (Scream, American Horror Story, etc)

If it had gone forward, it's doubtful John Kassir would have reprised his role as M. Night had different plans for a new Crypt Keeper. Also sounded like it wasn't going to be an actual anthology series, but each season would be the story...basically like every other horror themed show on TV (Scream, American Horror Story, etc)

The show still would've been interesting to see though.

The show still would've been interesting to see though.

True! I definitely would have watched it.

Turner Entertainment Boss on "Tales from the Crypt" Reboot's Rights Wrangling
by Anthony D'Alessandro
July 27, 2017


A year and a half ago, TBS and TNT entertainment president and Turner chief creative officer Kevin Reilly announced a reboot of "Tales from the Crypt" with M. Night Shyamalan steering the ship.

Based on the EC comic book, the popular original series ran for 93 episodes on HBO from 1989-1996. The reboot was also to be an anthology series with each episode focusing on a new story.

But news surfaced in April that "Tales" had stalled due to complications over the rights with the Turner network.





“It’s been fun with lawyers, it’s been really fun,” Reilly said today in a press scrum session about the state of "Tales".

“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.”



Reilly said the original comic book was sold to various producers and creators, thus complicating "Tales’" situation.

There’s a chance that it finally will rise from the dead, but in the immediate future as far as genre goes on TNT, the excitement is around Ridley Scott’s sci-fi programming block.

http://deadline.com/2017/07/tales-from-the-crypt-m-night-shyamalan-tnt-kevin-reilly-1202137817/

Cryptkeeper Actor John Kassir Explains "Tales from the Crypt's" Current Rights Issues
by Alex DiVincenzo
September 20, 2023


During his panel at last weekend’s Terror Con in Marlborough, MA, John Kassir — the Crypt Keeper himself — shared his perspective on "Tales from the Crypt‘s" complicated rights issues that halted TNT and M. Night Shyamalan’s reboot attempt in 2016 and continue to prohibit new iterations of the beloved horror anthology series.

“Obviously, Tales from the Crypt was a comic book, and those rights were granted to the producers of the show back in the late ’80s,” he explained. “So then they started producing the show, and it was very big producers. We’re talking about Joel Silver, who did all the Lethal Weapons, the Die Hard movies, the Matrix movies. He’s a very big producer, and he also has a reputation of being one of the biggest *******s in the business. You didn’t hear me say that, but you did!” The audience laughed.

“And Dick Donner, who’s one of the nicest people in the business and one of the best directors, David Giler, who produced Alien, Walter Hill, amazing director of 48 Hrs and The Warriors, and Bob Zemeckis, who brought in a bunch of his ideas for effects that we could do in the show.”




“These are the producers on the show, so they had a lot of hopes for it. They started making the show and were able to call in a lot of favors, get a lot of stars, get a lot of directors. Some of your favorite horror directors directed episodes of these, as well as stars. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Tom Hanks, they all came in and wanted to direct. They’d give them a week to direct a Tales from the Crypt episode.”

“This was all working out great for us, but after you do 93 episodes and movies and all that stuff over a period of time, the rights lapse. Sadly, [EC Comics publisher] William Gaines passed away. He did amazing things, and we loved him. He would grant us the rights tomorrow. But the rights reverted to the family, who probably gave them to a lawyer, who probably doesn’t work in the industry.”




Kassir continued, “So those producers own this Crypt Keeper but can’t create new material with it without the rights. All the old stuff we created belongs to them. For them to do more, they would have to get the rights back, which they haven’t been able to get EC Comics to grant.

[EC] did grant them to TNT, who were going to do a whole block of horror with M. Night Shyamalan, and the Crypt Keeper was going to be the host. Well, they couldn’t get that Crypt Keeper, so that went down the tube. I think they were even trying to sell the rights off to more than one person, which nobody wanted.

This happens in our business all the time with popular franchises from the past that people want to revive. It’s a hard thing to get done. It hasn’t happened in many years. Some people who were involved at the top don’t believe that it will ever happen, but who knows? Nobody would be happier than me,” he chuckles.




“Because I’m both a fan and an actor — not that I ever got paid that much from Tales from the Crypt. It was an expensive show to produce. I don’t even know if they could afford to make that show nowadays. It took five puppeteers to make the Crypt Keeper work. They always complained about what they had to pay them, and I was like, ‘Dude, it’s the character! What do you want?’

Maybe they’d want to use CGI. Well, nobody wants to see that. A CGI Crypt Keeper would probably be pretty cool, but not if you already know what he could look like as an animatronic puppet, which is probably why kids were getting hooked on it. There’s something so endearing about that, you know?”

He concludes, “That’s really what the problem was in that situation.”

https://bloody-disgusting.com/tv/3780018/tales-from-the-crypt-cryptkeeper-actor-john-kassir-explains-the-current-rights-issues/