The original concept for THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” wasn’t that great

Here’s some interesting fun twilight zone curiosity that was recently reported to me that I thought I’d share. The Twilight Zone is one of my all-time favorite shows and William Shatner’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is a classic!

The episode centers on an airline flight passenger who notices a hideous creature walking around the plane’s wing while in flight and eventually begins to tear it apart. Everyone on board thinks the passenger is losing his mind.

Well, it turns out that the original concept for this episode wasn’t quite a nightmare. It was more like a very nice and carefree dream. The episode was directed by Richard Donner and written by Richard Matheson. During an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Matheson shared the original concept for the story, saying:

“I was on an airplane and I looked out, and it was all these fluffy clouds. And I thought, man, what if I saw a guy skiing down that road like it was snow? Because it looked like snow. And then, when I thought about it. , it wasn’t very scary, so I turned it into a gremlin on the wing of the plane. And at first it was published as a novel, then I sold it to “Twilight Zone”. “

Yes, having a gremlin outside on a plane wing was a much better and more disturbing choice. When I was a kid, whenever I flew on a plane I always looked out of the wing to see if there was a gremlin out there walking on it. Fortunately, I’ve never seen one.

Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” was first published as a short story that appeared in the 1961 horror anthology “Alone by Night,” edited by Michael and Don Congdon. Rod Serling picked it up for The Twilight Zone, and later, Giorgio Miller also remade as one of the four main segments in The Twilight Zone: The Movie. Most recently, it has been redone again for Jordan Peel’S The twilight zone reboot series. It was titled “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet” and it read Adam Scott.