New M. Night Shyamalan Thriller Delayed Due to Coronavirus

The spread of the coronavirus pandemic has seen the delay of another exciting project, as M. Night Shyamalan‘s upcoming thriller has been pulled from its February 2021 release and off the schedule entirely. According to Deadline, the film is currently in pre-production and was set to shoot in Philadelphia, with the pandemic putting a halt to all planned productions, including Shyamalan’s latest. No details about the film have been released, though the filmmaker has previously teased that it would be a thriller and that it would be released by Universal Pictures. You can currently watch Shyamalan’s TV series Servant, currently available on Apple TV+.

The filmmaker’s breakout movie was 1999’s The Sixth Sense, which featured a shocking reveal in the film’s final act. A number of his subsequent thrillers similarly involved unexpected twists in their finales, earning the filmmaker a reputation for delivering such twists. As the success of those thrillers began to dwindle, Shyamalan began to expand his offerings with films like After Earth and The Last Airbender before returning to the horror world with The Visit in 2015.

Shyamalan previously detailed that he aims to stick with the thriller genre with his upcoming films.

“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,” Shyamalan shared with Collider. “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.”

During that conversation, he noted that he had three total ideas that he was excited about developing, but that two of them took prominence and earned February 2021 and February 2023 release dates. It’s currently unknown if the 2023 film will also be delayed due to the pandemic.

Stay tuned for details on Shyamalan’s new films.

Are you disappointed by these delays? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!