9/02/2010

Hey, we're getting Unbreakable 2!!! Sorta.

I still have some friends who never knew that M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable was meant to just be the opening act in a potential trilogy. The 2000 film starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson was like a traditional comic book origin story, establish the conflict between the reluctant hero and his evil nemesis. To me, Unbreakable is a nearly perfect film, and shows what the genre could be if it ever got away from all the capes and cowls.

The planned sequel never happened. Unbreakable struggled to crack $100M. It didn't help that Shyamalan's credibility sunk like a stone in a bath tub. His big ideas could still get greenlit but the personal projects like Unbreakable were going to be a tougher sell. 

Now the director tells MTV that the ideas he was going to use for the sequel are going to be put to good use. Just not as people like me wish they would. The director says that some elements are being incorporated into the third film in his Night Chronicles trilogy.

Shyamalan: I cannibalized the idea for the sequel to Unbreakable for one of the Night Chronicles. It was such a cool idea for a villain, and it was actually originally in the script for Unbreakable, and it was too much. There were too many villains, so I pulled this villain out and was like, ‘I’ll make this the second flick.’


I’ll just say it: the third Night Chronicles movie is what would have been the sequel. So now I need to come up with a new idea.

The fact that he's even still talking about coming up with a new idea for a sequel fills me with some hope, but I ain't holding my breath. 

For those that don't know, The Night Chronicles is a trilogy of films based on ideas from Shyamalan himself. He's not writing or directing any of them as far as we know. The first leg of that trilogy is Devil, due to be released on September 17th. The follow-up is Twelve Strangers, directed by The Last Exorcism's Daniel Stamm.