Here’s one of those bits of movie news that has you leaning further and further forward the more you read (or, à la that Vince McMahon meme, tipping further and further back in your chair.) Deadline are reporting that Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal is being lined up to lead M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie. And as if that isn’t enough to already grab our collective attention, said film is reportedly an original supernatural romantic thriller (*nod*, *nod*, *nod*, and quadruple *nod*), co-created by Shyamalan alongside The Notebook author Nicholas Sparks.
Now, you might’ve picked up on the fact that we say this superrommer (as nobody will ever call it) has been co-created by Shyamalan and Sparks as opposed to co-written by, but that’s not an error. Rather, in a similar vein to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s parallel, multimedia collaboration on 2001: A Space Odyssey, the filmmaker and author have conceived this creative project together, but will be writing the story in their preferred mediums separately. Both versions will share the same characters and concept, but will otherwise exist in their own distinct forms, with the central love story at their heart carrying between. Noteworthily, this will be the first time Shyamalan has collaborated on an original story with other writers since he teamed up with Will Smith and Gary Whitta on sci-fi disaster movie — and disaster sci-fi movie — After Earth.
Plot details for Shyamalan, Sparks, and Gyllenhaal’s team-up remain firmly under wraps at this stage, but the news comes off the back of a big year for both director and star. 2024 saw Gyllenhaal successfully reboot Road House under Doug Liman’s direction, nail his starring streaming debut in Apple TV’s Presumed Innocent, and land a role opposite Denzel Washington on Broadway in an upcoming production of Othello. For Shyamalan, the release of Trap gave the auteur a chance to put his daughter Saleka Shyamalan centre stage in a Hitchcockian concert thriller that had social media ablaze and a more than healthy box office showing of $82 million on a $30 million budget.
For now though, we wait with bated breath for more news on this intriguing new collaboration, whose announcement headline alone has twists enough to fill a Shyamalan joint and then some. What odds can we get on this somehow being a stealth sequel to The Notebook? The Notespook, perhaps? The NoteboOohk? Hey, Shyamalan does love a ghost story and has got previous when it comes seeing dead people.