You can say what you like about M Night Shyamalan's movies – and, Lord knows, people do and will – but the man knows how to put a cast together. In the past he's been responsible for breaking such unquestionably brilliant talent as Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense), Abigail Breslin (Signs) and Bryce Dallas Howard (The Village) and extracting great turns from 'name' talent. His next, The Happening, looks set to continue in that tradition.
To the cast that already features the always terrific Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, Shyamalan has now added John Leguizamo. Leguizamo's movie career may only feature a few diamonds in a sea of crap, but even when the movie sucks he's usually the best thing in it.
Leguizamo will play best friend to a man (Wahlberg) who takes his family on the run when a natural disaster threatens to end the world. It's a typically 'oooooh'-inspiring set-up for Shyamalan, even if it does beg the question of where a person might run to if the world's about to end (we'd suggest Liberty; nothing truly awful can ever happen in Liberty). After the commercial and critical drubbing taken by Lady in the Water, here's hoping that Shyamalan can make this one the sum of its parts.
UPDATE: Speaking of Breslins – which we did, way up there in paragraph one – Abigail's 15-year-old brother Spencer has also been cast in the movie as Wahberg's son who is, in his words, "a typical teenage boy, a bit of a smart-ass". Wait, Mark Wahlberg is old enough to have a 15-year-old son? But it was only yesterday that he was running around in his tightie-whities with Funky Bunch body-popping behind his youthful self. Jeez, we must be getting old.