M. Night Shyamalan's Next Three Movies Will Be "Weird And Dark"

M. Night Shyamalan was on the verge of an exciting new comeback after the 2015 sleeper hit The Visit and the well-received surprise Unbreakable sequel Split. But then came this year's Glass, the highly anticipated third film in Shyamalan's Unbreakable trilogy that was met with scorching reviews from critics. But while Shyamalan's creative comeback is in a potentially fragile state, the director is already planning his next three films. And they're going to be "weird and dark."

Hot off the heels of his new Apple TV+ horror series Servant, Shyamalan is already mapping out his return to movies with three new ideas that could be a return to the "minimal, contained" approach of The Visit. In an interview with Collider, Shyamalan spoke about two movies ideas that he already feels "very strongly about," and a third thing that "might end up going in between these two":

"For me, there are ideas and they're in journals sometimes and they don't quite have the meat yet or whatever that thing is that makes it so I'm ready to commit two years of my life to making this—to writing and directing this—some of those ideas don't have that yet. They have to gestate a little bit. But there were two ideas where right away I was thinking about making them. And, interesting enough, there might be a third thing that came to me that might end up going in between these two. So there might be three."

Shyamalan has already set two films for 2021 and 2023 under Universal, though this prospect of a third film is new. The aforementioned two films are described as "thrillers," though no further details have been shared. Shyamalan for now is teasing his next movies as "weird and dark," which sounds about right. He elaborated to Collider that he hopes these new thrillers will be a return to the more grounded vision of his 2015 hit The Visit with some "dark humor" and "big tonal risks":

"I'm loving this approach from The Visit on where they're minimal, contained, I own them, we take big tonal risks and try to hit that note of absurd-but-grounded, that dark humor moment and deal with some complicated things and not necessarily take the audience where they're comfortable, both during or even at the end. That's all mitigated because we're working with a respectable number and I feel like I'm being a good partner to my distributors. I like that because it allows me to iterate really fast in the making of these stories, so those films follow that architecture of approach and process. Even if it's tricking myself into being more dangerous, it's working because when I think about these three films that I'm thinking about—all weird and dark—I think that they speak to each other a little bit."

I'm glad that Shyamalan is not discouraged by the poor reception to Glass, even if it derailed the momentum of his creative comeback. But even if you're a fan of Shyamalan or not, at least we can look forward to a director who won't compromise his vision while giving us original thriller films.