After the success of his most recent film Old, which has brought in over $90 million at the global box office, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has confirmed what his next project as writer/director will be by releasing a new cryptic teaser video. In the video, shared on the filmmaker’s Twitter account, comes a series of knocks, followed by a release date, and that’s it. Distributor Universal Pictures added a hair more context, revealing the movie will be titled Knock at the Cabin and confirming that it’s set to arrive in theaters on February 3, 2023 (making its full release date 2/3/23).
Precious little is actually known about the project beyond the above unfortunately, and it will likely remain that way for some time. The writer/director has offered some updates on the project on his Twitter account, previously writing on August 30 that he’d completed the most recent draft of “the next one,” calling it “Super tight. Under a 100 pages.” Shyamalan has been tightlipped and secretive about all of his movies for the past 20+ years of his career. Take for example the 2017 movie Split, one of most well received recent efforts, which was praised for being a return-to-form thriller all its own even before audiences realized that it was actually a secret sequel to his 2000 hit Unbreakable.ย
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Split, like his 2015 movie The Visit, 2019’s Glass, and his most recent movie Old have all been “comeback” movies for Shyamalan in a way. After finding early success and then finding himself on the receiving end of brutal criticism and box office failures, Night had to scrap his way back and pay his dues again in Hollywood. That said, he’s been very outspoken about loving how he’s making movies now..
“I’m loving this approach fromย The Visitย 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,” theย 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 โ all weird and dark โ I think that they speak to each other a little bit.”
With about a year and a half between now and Shymalan’s Knock at the Cabin we may not know what it’s about until this time next year.