We’re only a week away now from M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender,” which the filmmaker hopes will salvage his reputation after his disastrous last couple of pictures (and signs are there it could well do that, commercially if not critically). He’s already moving on; details broke earlier in the week about the director’s secret new script, which is currently making the rounds around town, with Bruce Willis, Bradley Cooper and Gwyneth Paltrow attached.
Shyamalan clearly isn’t content with just that, however, as Deadline are reporting that the writer/director is currently setting up the second movie in his “Night Chronicles” series, which like Sam Raimi’s Ghost House or Guillermo Del Toro’s Double Dare You, sees the helmer producing a series of low-budget horror pics. First up is next year‘s “Night Chronicles: Devil,” which is about a group of people trapped in an elevator who discover that one of their number is Satan, from the directors of “Quarantine,” and which toplines Chris Messina, Blandy McBlanderson from “Julie & Julia” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
The new project, entitled “Twelve Strangers,” seems to be a spooky take on “Twelve Angry Men,” following a jury deliberating in a case with supernatural overtones, and Shyamalan’s set Chris Sparling, the writer of the Sundance hit “Buried,” to write it. Seeing as that movie, which has picked up some pretty good buzz on the circuit, is entirely set in a coffin buried underground, one assumes that Shyamalan feels he’s a dab hand at writing for confined spaces. The picture will likely shoot next year for a 2012 release date (Shyamalan’s deal with Media Rights Capital is for one movie a year for the next three), and Shyamalan would only produce, not direct
Deadline have also dug up a tiny amount of info on Shyamalan’s secret script, which is likely to be the helmer’s next directorial effort; apparently, it’s not unlike a supernatural version of “Taken,” with Cooper taking the lead role as a father looking for his missing daughter, and tapping into supernatural powers in order to find her. We haven’t had much faith in Shyamalan for a while, and this doesn’t sound particularly inspiring, but at least it doesn’t sound like it’ll feature Mark Wahlberg running away from the wind…