It’s amazing to think it’s been fifteen years now since three huge movies were released that were considered major game changers: The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, and The Sixth Sense. While many thought the filmmakers behind these movies would go on to great heights, it turned out to be the peak for all of these directors, with M Night Shyamalan especially becoming a major joke in Hollywood.
Shyamalan’s career took an especially bad turn last summer with After Earth, which many suspect was a Scientology movie in disguise, and it was a major money loser for Sony. So the big question is can this guy ever come back, or is he over and done? Can anyone save Shyamalan’s career? Does anyone care anymore?
Well, maybe a reunion with Bruce Willis can help, and Vulture tells us the dynamic duo who made magic in The Sixth Sense may indeed make another movie together. Oddly enough, it won’t be a supernatural story, but it does take place in Philadelphia, which is no big surprise.
Deadline tells us this project will be Labor of Love, which was one of the first screenplays Shyamalan ever sold in Hollywood. The screenplay was sold to Fox over twenty years ago, and it never died. (Denzel Washington was recently interested in playing the lead role.) It’s a story about a man who walks cross country to prove his love for his late wife.
So can a romantic story bring Shyamalan back from bad movie hell? Can anything? In Hollywood anybody can come back, but Shyamalan really needs to knock one out of the park, because he probably won’t get any more chances before he’s directing episodic television, or direct to BluRay movies in Bulgaria.
