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"Steel" is not The Twilight Zone's finest hour. "Boxing was legally abolished in 1968," intones host Rod Serling. Fortunately for fight fans, robotics have somehow leapt ahead to the point where humanoid robots can plausibly stand in humans in the ring. Lee Marvin plays "Steel Kelly," a human former boxer who pretends to be a robot after the robo-boxer he manages breaks down ahead of a bout with its robo-opponent. Needless to say, the fight goes poorly for Kelly, and Serling solemnly informs us that his loss is "proof positive that you can't outpunch machinery" (is that really a lesson we needed?).

"Steel" may not hold up particularly well, but the extent of Matheson's contributions to The Twilight Zone is impressive: He wrote 14 scripts during the show's original run, including all-time classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which starred William Shatner at his hammy best. During the 1960s and 1970s, when the science fiction and horror genres were still in their television infancy, Matheson's contributions included episodes of Star Trek, Night Gallery, and the first two televised appearances of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Matheson generated a significant body of work in his six decades as a screenwriter, though many of his original short stories remain frustratingly difficult to find in print. But in the past five years, Matheson's greatest exposure by far has come has come with a trio of big-budget films: I Am Legend, The Box, and now Real Steel. These films, based on Matheson's original writing, were often adapted by screenwriters who weren't even born when their source material was first published.

Matheson's writing lends itself particularly well to contemporary Hollywood because it's "high concept"--which translates, in screenwriting parlance, to "easy to pitch." At the heart of Matheson's best tales you'll find a simple, compelling question, from I Am Legend ("what if a mass epidemic left a single man alive?") to "Button, Button," the short story that became The Box ("would a needy family sacrifice the life of a complete stranger for a massive financial windfall?"). Hollywood loves these kinds of stories because they're easy to understand and therefore easy to mass-market. At least, that's the idea, though it doesn't always work in practice: Where I Am Legend succeeded (at least financially) in drawing an audience to Matheson's brainchild, The Box was a bizarre, messy, box-office bomb.

So far, Real Steel looks to be taking the I Am Legend road to box office victory. Early buzz and test audience reactions for the film have been so positive that DreamWorks greenlit production on a sequel as early as last April. If audiences turn out for robot boxing this weekend, we'll have plenty more robot boxing to look forward to. And we'll have Richard Matheson to thank.