A story from the Twilight Zone series is getting its own film version with the writer Michael Brandt set to co-write the adaptation and make his directorial debut with it too.

Countdown is a futuristic film which tells of a group of astronauts who land on a planet and find their own spaceship already there, crashed, with their own corpses on board.

The astronauts are obviously confused and set about trying to work out what is going on and whether or not they may actually be dead already.

The original Twilight Zone episode was called Death Ship and was written by Richard Matheson who adapted it from his own short story. Yes, that's Richard Matheson the writer of the story from which I Am Legend (Filmstalker review) is adapted.

Michael Brandt is adapting the script with his writing partner Derek Haas, together they have written a number of strong scripts already, including 3:10 to Yuma and the upcoming Wanted. This will see Brandt's directorial debut.

The story sounds an interesting one, but the big question is how Brandt will turn out as a director. He does say a few words about the story and why some updates of older science fiction films from this time don't work, and I have to say his words are rather comforting and do make me think that he's starting off on the right foot:

"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…

…The updates that are successful -- not just of this but of any of the great 1950s sci-fi concepts -- are those that take the idea and bring a modern sensibility to it…When it misses sometimes, it's because people get caught up in the story from start to finish."

His comments from The Hollywood Reporter do make you think that this could have something to it, and the original story is so strong anyway. I'm definitely interested.