M. Night Shyamalan is a brand. His name alone being stamped on a trailer can sell a decent amount of movie tickets. The Indian-born, Philadelphia-raised filmmaker has been riffing on “Twilight Zone”-type and Hitchcock-influenced premises for close to 25 years now.
Shyamalan is now teasing his next film with a new post on social media. This news comes as his last release, August’s “Trap,” has just cleared the $80M mark at the box-office against a budget of $30M. You can call it a success, especially since Shyamalan practically self-funded the whole project.
Now, taking to Instagram, Shyamalan posted an image of a red notebook, teasing that he’s started writing his next film, set to be the 17th of his career. No plot details were revealed, and we likely won’t know anything about it until, at least. next year, but a new Shyamalan is indeed coming.
It has previously been speculated that Shyamalan might finally be looking to make “Labor Of Love.” Based on one of the very first scripts the director sold in his career, which went to Fox in 1993, the story reportedly follows a bookstore owner who loses the love of his life in a tragic accident.
Shyamalan was tempted to shoot “Labor of Love” after completing “Unbreakable” in 2000, but then decided to make “Signs” instead. An old-school Shyamalan script might be just what the doctor ordered. The India-born American filmmaker has yet to top his early aughts twin peaks of “The Sixth Sense”/ “Unbreakable” which were released more than twenty years ago.
Shyamalan’s had many up and downs since then, constantly challenging himself, and his audience, but it seems as though Newsweek’s 2004 proclamation that he’s the “The Next Spielberg” feels rather far-fetched today.
With that said, and despite faltering in its final few minutes, “Trap” was a pleasantly atmospheric, and nasty, cat-and-mouse game. Josh Hartnett was great. I loved the wide angled shots. It was one of Shyamalan’s better efforts of the last 15 years, right up there with “The Visit” and “Split.”