CBS Is Rebooting A Weird Kyle Chandler Sci-Fi Show
Kyle chandler's old series is coming back!
This article is more than 2 years old
CBS is dusting off an old Kyle Chandler-led series and giving it the reboot treatment for a new generation of viewers. Early Edition is coming back to the air with a new female protagonist. The news comes from Deadline, which reports that CBS is revamping the classic 1990s fantasy newspaper drama. The latest reboot has already been given a pilot order at the network but previous little is known about the on-screen talent at this point. However, behind the camera, the show will be executive produced by Melissa Glenn, DeVon Franklin and Bob Brush, who developed the original for TV.
For those unfamiliar, the original show aired for roughly 90 episodes on CBS between 1996 and 2000. Starring Kyle Chandler with a supporting cast that included Shanésia Davis-Williams, Fisher Stevens, Kristy Swanson and Billie Worley, Early Edition followed the adventures of a man who, for some reason, magically received tomorrow’s issue of The Chicago Sun-Times a day early by a mysterious cat, allowing him about 24 hours to take action and change the tragic events that would unfold that day.
The CBS reboot is said to follow an ambitious young journalist who discovers that she too is getting her city’s newspaper a day early and finds herself burdened with the responsibility of preventing or changing the news rather than simply reporting on it. While that’s all that’s known officially about CBS’ plans for the Early Edition reboot, a term that implies it will have no connective tissue to the 1990s show, the original series left a bit of wiggle room for a canonical passing of the torch.
As WeGotThisCovered notes, the 20th episode of the fourth season was meant to be the show’s finale. However, due to a mixup at CBS, it aired two episodes early. In it, it was somewhat explained that the reason Kyle Chandler’s character, Gary, had this power was that someone else who was getting the paper early before him saved his life as a child and decided that it would be his turn when he died. In that same episode, Gary meets a young girl named Lindsey Romick who had just lost her grandfather. It is heavily implied that Gary decides then and there that he wants to give her the responsibility of the paper when he is no longer able to do it himself.
Again, it’s possible that CBS will decide to simply throw out that torch-passing gimmick and start fresh with the new Early Edition as its own reboot. However, if you’re a writer looking to tie your new show to the old one in a way that doesn’t let it get in the way of the plot, simply naming your character Lindsey Romick would be a pretty fantastic and simple way to accomplish that.
CBS seems to be keeping its next crop of TV drama pilots in the family. Deadline notes that Early Edition joins two other dramas in the cycle for the 2021-22 development season. One is from SEAL Team star Max Thieriot and Grey’s Anatomy alums Tony Phelan and Joan Rater. The other is a mother-and-son legal drama from Scott Prendergast and Dr. Phil McGraw.
