M. Night Shyamalan reveals what killed Tales from the Crypt reboot

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

As we all know well and good by this point in time, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan was working on bringing HBO's classic horror anthology series TALES FROM THE CRYPT back to the small screen via TNT. The revival was then tragically delayed over rights issues. Now it seems, for the time being, the series is D.O.A. Shyamalan himself spoke to Digital Spy about the planned series and just what the hell happened to such a winning idea, and the man came right out and said that as far as he knows and believes the project is as dead as… well, The Cryptkeeper himself.

Shyamalan on what killed his reboot:

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.

Unfortunately, this seems to go hand in hand with the comments TNT president Kevin Reilly made to Deadline back in June of 2017, when he said:

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…

Well, this just sucks, doesn't it? I'd heard the rights were a pain in the ass years ago and that the upcoming series wouldn't feature the HBO Cryptkeeper based on such issues. Didn't know the potential revival wasn't going to sport the HBO Cryptkeeper? Well, now you do.

Are you as upset as I am that TNT's TALES FROM THE CRYPT seems to be dead in the water? I know you are. All the same, let us know how excited you were about the new series and what your favorite episode of the original series was below! Until we know when (and if) TNT plans to get back to work on resolving the rights issues surrounding TALES FROM THE CRYPT, you can always buy the full HBO series on DVD RIGHT HERE!

And remember that at least Shyamalan's UNBREAKABLE/SPLIT simultaneous sequel GLASS is still heading our way on January 18, 2019.