M. Night Shyamalan took to social media to spill the beans about his next project which already has cast confirmations and a working title…
Writer and director M. Night Shyamalan has been teasing his twitter followers for some months now with insights into a new script that he’s been writing and today he revealed, in a series of tweets, that this project will be a, much anticipated, sequel to his cult hit Unbreakable.
The Unbreakable sequel has been one of the most demanded in modern cinematic history and the original film has been used, defiantly, by Shyamalan’s sympathizers for well over a decade as evidence of his talent.
[The following contains plot information from the films Split and Unbreakable]
The sequel comes after revelations at the end of Shyamalan’s recent, both financially and critically well-received, film Split where a connection is made between the two films via the appearance of Bruce Willis’ character from Unbreakable; implying a future confrontation between him and James McAvoy’s character. It was a very fun ending to a fun film that rode the wave of excitement created by the now stereotypical post or mid credits scene used by superhero films. Unbreakable is, of course, itself a modern and more grounded retelling of superhero lore and structure. So fans knew that this signalled the return of, at the very least, this story concept but no one could be sure as to when. It’s already been 17 years. Well, Shyamalan also revealed the core cast of the film and that it will be arriving on our screens, internationally, a lot sooner than previously thought by many.
Shyamalan dated the international release of the film in a tweet, scheduling it for January 18th 2019, and confirmed that not only will Willis and McAvoy be reprising their roles, so too will Anya Taylor-Joy be returning as her character from Split and Samuel L. Jackson will be returning as his villainous character, Mr Glass, from Unbreakable. There’s no indication as to how involved Taylor-Joy will be in the project but it’s safe to assume that Jackson’s character will have some prominence in the story as Shyamalan revealed that the film will be titled Glass.
Though he’s been a deeply maligned presence in the mainstream film industry for some time now, even his most vicious detractors still look at M. Night Shyamalan’s career with hope for the glimmer of raw talent present in his, undeniably, impressive early work. Split restored a lot of faith in him as a creator of original films and he seems to work much more effectively under the micro-budgeted philosophy of Jason Blum’s production company Blumhouse. Shyamalan made it clear that Glass will be another collaboration with Blum and distributors Universal but there’s no news yet on the budget. Hopefully everything will be kept in perspective and a great film will come out of it. But, if not, at the very least the Unbreakable sequel is guaranteed to cause some kind of a stir on its release and the self-proclaimed king of plot twists may still have some surprises left for us.
