The first question some of us had when we learned that CBS has ordered a pilot for an Early Edition reboot was simple: Will it still be about someone getting tomorrow’s newspaper today? Won’t they get, say, Twitter notifications from the future? The New York Times morning email a day early? Maybe they download a special news app?
Nope. Still a newspaper. But there’s a twist: now it’s a journalist getting the news from the future. As Variety puts it, “She then finds herself in the complicated business of changing the news instead of reporting it.”
But… her job?
The original Early Edition starred a young Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), who didn’t just get the next day’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times—he got it delivered by an adorable cat. Knowing what would happen just one day ahead of time allowed him to try to change things for the better. Somehow, this show ran for four seasons, and also starred Shanésia Davis-Williams, Fisher Stevens, and the original Buffy herself, Kristy Swanson.
Variety says the reboot’s journalist character is “ambitious but uncompromising,” which doesn’t go very far to explain how she’s going to know the future but also do her job without countless kinds of conflict of interest, but it’s possible I’m expecting too much from a show about magical news.
The pilot episode is written by Melissa Glenn, whose credits include episodes of Iron Fist, Leverage, Revolution, and Zoo. It’s one of several ’90s reboots in the works at the moment, including Quantum Leap (which it has a lot in common with, being a show about trying to change the future, one small act at a time).
No casting or airdate has been announced yet. Unless someone’s got a newspaper from later this year they can check?
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