Dave Bautista in Talks to Star in M. Night Shyamalan’s Next Movie

Guardians of the Galaxy and Dune star Dave Bautista is in talks to star in M. Night Shyamalan’s next film, Knock at the Cabin. According to a new report from Deadline, Bautista was eager to take the opportunity to work with the Oscar-nominated Shyamalan whose most recent film, Old, brought in more than $90 million at the global box office. Shyamalan is set to write and direct the film as well as produce with Ashwin Rajan under the Blinding Edge Pictures banner along with Marc Bienstock and Steven Schneider.

Distributor Universal Pictures recently revealed that the film is set to arrive in theaters on February 3, 2023.

Very little is. Known about Knock at the Cabin at this point, though Shyamalan has offered a few small updates on the project via his Twitter account. On August 30th, he wrote that he’d completed the most recent draft of “the next one” and called it “Super tight, Under a 100 pages.” However, while details are few about Knock at the Cabin, that isn’t abnormal for Shyamalan films. The filmmaker is known for being secretive about his projects, though he has also been outspoken about how loving the approach he’s been taking to making movies now as opposed to earlier in in his career.

“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,” the filmmaker shared with Collider in 2019. “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.”

As for Bautista, the actor has recently appeared in Dune as well as Army of the Dead. He is currently filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and is set to make “a Lethal Weapon-type buddy cop movie” with DC star Jason Momoa for MGM.

Knock at the Cabin is currently set to open on February 3, 2023.

Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images