With M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” getting ready to hit theaters next week, the director is already lining up his next project, with a helluva cast attached to star. Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow and Bruce Willis are all “loosely attached” to star in the project which, as usual with Shyamalan, is being kept under wraps for now.
The script is being shopped around town, but the question remains if anyone is willing to take a chance on a new, original Shyamalan idea. His last film to crack $100 million at the box office was 2004’s “The Village,” while his latest two efforts,”Lady In The Water” and “The Happening,” were outright failures. Our guess is that it will greatly depend on what kind of budget the film will have and if the stars circling the picture actually sign on the dotted line. If ‘Airbender’ is a hit it will be interesting to see if it’s enough to lift Shyamalan out of director’s jail and get his own projects off the ground again. However, with the cast he’s assembling it might be incentive enough for studios to give the director another shot at his own material.
So just how secretive is this project? Only top executives are allowed to read the script and it must be in the presence of a Shyamalan assistant who supervises the read and leaves with the screenplay when the exec is done.
“The Last Airbender” recently had its release date moved up a day and arrives in theaters on July 1st in converted 3D.
