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March 25, 2008


Summit is planning to give a classic Twilight Zone episode the big screen treatment in the shape of Countdown, the futuristic tale of a group of astronauts stranded on a distant planet.

Based on the Twilight Zone episode "Death Ship" (written by I Am Legend scribe Richard Matheson), the film will follow the astronauts' efforts to discover where they are and why they are there, questions that become more pertinent when they stumble across a spacecraft full of corpses that resemble themselves.

Michael Brandt will make his directorial debut with the film, and he and writing partner Derek Haas (3:10 to Yuma, 2 Fast 2 Furious) are currently working on their own version of Stephen Gregg and Scott Burn's original screenplay.

"Countdown is fantastic because it wraps the themes of fate and predestination in a movie that is really a giant puzzle [that will also] be fun for the audience to piece together," Brandt explained.

The film will have a budget of around $30m, although there's no word on a start date yet.