After labouring for the last year or more on The Last Airbender, it would appear that M. Night Shyamalan is ready to get back into the original script business. Hollywood is abuzz with chatter that the writer/director is shopping a new screenplay to studios around the town. And while not much is known about the script itself, apparently Shyamalan veteran Bruce Willis is loosely attached to the movie, along with Bradley Cooper and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Before you get excited/disappointed/bored at the idea that it might be Unbreakable 2 or, even more excitingly, **More Happening **(kidding!), calm it down. Given M Night’s notorious need for secrecy, nothing has leaked yet.
In fact, even studio bigwigs who’ve been shown the script have had to agree to his terms, which included having one of his assistants deliver the document, supervise the reading and then immediately take it back. And word has it that if the executive so much as mentioned to their own staff that they’d just read the material, the assistant was fully authorized to cut the studio bod’s head off and return it on a shiny silver platter to Shyamalan. Admittedly, that last part might have all been in our warped little minds.
While Airbender could yet spawn a franchise (we’ll have to wait and see how it does when it hits cinemas), it’s always possible that Shyamalan could squeeze in other films between entries, like Christopher Nolan has done between Batman outings.
And though his cred has taken a severe battering in recent years, this new mystery screenplay proves that he can at least still attract acting talent. Question is, can he get back to the glory days of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable?
The Last Airbender, meanwhile, arrives over here on August 13.