M Night Shyamalan, known to the International Friends as the Shamhammer, will be offering up a new twist to his next film project. He won’t be directing it.
Shamhammer is taking his original story, “Devil” and producing but not directing .
The “Sixth Sense” director will produce the supernatural thriller “Devil,” an independently financed project based on his idea. No plot details were revealed.
It will be directed by “Quarantine” duo John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle from a script by Brian Nelson (“30 Days of Night”). The project will be the first feature Shyamalan has written or produced without directing.
I like how every time the media names Shamhammer they say “The Sixth Sense director…” like that was his only other film. There was a slow decline in the appreciation of his films, and if he had the chance to go back in time and release them in a different order I wonder if they would be appreciated more. Unbreakable was by far my favourite Shamhammer film.
So with the playground mockery Night had to endure after the release of the Happening, and his next project being the family film adaption of the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender (which appears to have dropped the Avatar part in the title) I think it is a good thing that Night is shaking up his formula. Frankly, people anticipated his trademark twist to the storyline.
He had the same gig going on for 4-5 films. I don’t think that they were bad films (Lady in the Water was weak) but they were all cut from the same mold. Shamhammer directed, wrote and produced all of his movies, and they all had a twist. Excellent concept on paper and I am sure it was a winning formula for the studios for a while, but we kind of anticipated that we had to look for “something” out of the ordinary the whole time and it sort of ruined the movie experience.
So I like that Night is stretching his wings and working in different capacities on different films. I still think he has talent in him and I hope to see that come out in the next couple projects.
