M Night Shyamalan confirms ‘Unbreakable’ sequel and considers doing another ‘Avatar’ film, ‘Last Airbender 2’
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s is promoting his latest film, After Earth, opening in theaters this weekend, the filmmaker discussed the possibility of returning to two of his previous properties for a sequel.
Fans of Shyamalan’s 2000 film Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, will be happy to hear that a sequel has not been forgotten as the The Sixth Sense filmmaker told Huff Po.
“I want it to happen, too. We’ve been talking about almost the same subject in every one of your questions, which is artistic integrity — something versus an agenda. Right? And almost every single one of your questions was agenda versus intention, even though you didn’t realize it, but it kind of fell into that theme as we were talking.”
So Shyamalan took offense to the agenda theory, that he sits down to write a twist ending.
“That’s an agenda versus “I want to talk about loneliness.” And then it comes out, “How is the best way to talk about loneliness?” Intention versus agenda. And then I go, “Oh my God, if I make a movie about loneliness and everybody hated it, will it be able to come out and people will get it?” That’s when you start going, “Oh my God,” and you try to push that away. The same thing with “Unbreakable,” to some extent, it’s excitement to be made. “It’s such a fun thing” is squashing my ability to find the thing that’s connecting me with it. Does that make sense? So, I don’t feel like I did it for agenda reasons. So, slowly I’m getting a story in my head that I feel like is able to tell what I’m feeling right now.”
While critics panned the film, The Last Airbender was a box office success and may yield a sequel as well.
“Yeah, I love the kind of Eastern philosophies of that. Those are costly movies to make and they take a lot of time. So, what happens is, there’s a thriller I can do pretty fast, they go quickly. And I didn’t expect to make another big movie — I was going to make a thriller and then go make the sequel to “Airbender.” Then I made “After Earth,” which took a long time, so it kind of took that two-and-a-half to three-year period. So, I’m trying to sit down and see if I want to do a really small movie next.”
Check out the full interview here
