TwistyM. Night Shyamalan's next film is a "supernatural romantic thriller" starring Jake Gyllenhaal that's been co-created with The Notebook's Nicholas SparksA novel written by Sparks is also happening.Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios News by Fran Ruiz Contributor Published on Jan. 30, 2025 Love or hate Trap (I thought it was okay), you gotta admit that M. Night Shyamalan has been on a roll of getting cost-effective flicks made quickly since Old (2021). Up next from the director, there's a "supernatural romantic thriller" in development, and the always reliable Jake Gyllenhaal has already joined the cast as lead.Deadline shared the news, also revealing the story was co-created by Shyamalan himself and best-selling novelist Nicholas Sparks, who you might know as the guy behind The Notebook (1996).To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Plot details are being kept a mystery for now, but it seems the story concept has blossomed into two separate projects: a movie script written by Shyamalan and a novel being penned by Sparks. "Both projects will be based on the same concept and set of characters, but tailored to their respective mediums," adds Deadline about the "original love story."When we hear "supernatural romantic thriller," it's not strange to think about the 2018 Best Picture winner The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. It remains to be seen whether this will lean on a darker, more grounded tone or feel a bit fable-like, like Shyamalan's own Lady in the Water (2006), which wasn't well-received at all when it first came out.Regardless, it's good to see a high-profile director knocking out big-screen projects that turn a profit consistently. Old, Knock at the Cabin, and Trap have represented a 'return to form' of sorts for the filmmaker even if all of them have caused division among critics and moviegoers. At the very least, they're self-contained 'high concept' flicks that don't feel like a slog and run on healthy doses of originality that we don't see much of these days in wide releases.For Gyllenhaal, this new project represents another potential mid-sized win after landing a critical hit with Doug Liman's Road House (2024) at Amazon MGM Studios and Michael Bay's Ambulance (2022) on top of the critically acclaimed limited series Presumed Innocent at Apple TV+. Soon, he'll "share the stage starting next month with Denzel Washington in an adaptation of Othello on Broadway," plus he's got more than half a dozen TV and movie projects in various stages of development at the moment.Considering how fast Shyamalan moves on his ideas and productions, we should expect this new movie to start shooting at some point this year and target a 2026 release. Warner Bros. is currently in talks to handle distribution.