Universal Acquires M. Night Shyamalan’s Microbudget Thriller The Visit

Posted by on November 12th, 2014   Filed under: Horror, Thriller
Source: The Wrap

thevisit

There’s no question that M. Night Shyamalan’s career is currently on the ropes after a string of painful failures that includes Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and, most recently, After Earth. Still, there must be another good movie in him somewhere and perhaps going back to basics will allow him to find it. We’ve known for a while now that Shyamalan has been working on a top secret self-financed microbudget film called Sundowning, but other than that, he has been keeping relatively quiet. Fortunately, this week it appears that the project has found a home and we finally have some solid info to report including a new title, release date and plot synopsis. Hit the jump for more details.

According to The Wrap, Universal Pictures has acquired worldwide distribution rights to M. Night Shyamalan’s next film, The Visit. The movie was produced by Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Sinister, Insidious) and executive produced by Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity, Insidious) and Ashwin Rajan (After Earth, Devil). The plot synopsis is as follows:

“The Visit… follows a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a week-long trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.”

The cast has not yet been officially announced but earlier this year it was being reported that Kathryn Hahn (Step Brothers) and Ed Oxenbould (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) had major roles. The Visit is scheduled to hit theatres on Sept. 11th, 2015. What do you think… could this be the start of M. Night Shyamalan’s comeback?



  • Deven Science

    Please recover from your funk, M. Night. I used to really, really like your movies.

  • Sam

    Microbudget M. Night Shyamalan movie? How will Frank know whether to love it or hate it?

  • Ryan R

    Lady in the water wasn’t that bad. Its actually one of my favorite M Nights films. Now the Last Airbender……..

  • theo

    The Happening and Airbinder were the only ones I thought was bad. Everything else I thought was good. If there was any big time director I’m 100% tired of, it would be Michael Bay.

    Why is this stereotypical & sexist douche still makin block busters?

  • ECONOMYpolitica

    Shaym

  • Darwinskid

    Bay only directs blockbusters for Paramount. Nobody else wants him.

    And the only reason Paramount keeps him around is because of Transformers; Paramount’s Executives are not smart enough to think about WHY a movie is successful, so they don’t realize that Bay is NOT the reason the Transformers crapfests are successful; they make big Opening Weekends because of the BRAND name, but STILL SUFFER extremely from bad word-of-mouth, otherwise each of the 3 sequels would’ve beaten “The Avengers” box-office by now, or at least beaten “The Avengers” opening weekends by now).

    You know what else? If you look at Michael Bay’s directorial box-office records WITHOUT the Transformers movies, then the total gross for each of his movies goes CONSTANTLY DOWNWARD from Armageddon (which got him his “do whatever i want” licesnse) all the way to Pain & Gain….That proves that Bay is NOTHING without big nostalgic franchises to cop out on.

    Shyamalan, on the other hand, even after his 1st real flop (Lady in the Water), he still managed to make his next movie (The Happening) gross higher, even though it was released IN LESS THEATERS than Lady in the Water….So unlike Bay, Shyamalan did NOT need to resort to exploiting a big franchise to get more people to see his next movie.

    Bay’s Pain & Gain, failed to outgross his flop, The Island — unlike Shyamalan’s Lady-to-Happening situation — even though Pain & Gain was released in more theaters than The Island.

    And you know what else: The Happening, despite receiving worse reviews than Pain & Gain, and also worse reviews than Lady in the Water, and being released in less theaters than either of those 2 movies….The Happening *STILL managed to surpass Pain & Gain’s opening weekend gross*.

    All in all, this just shows that M. Night Shyamalan actually has more fans/people wanting to see his non-franchise movies than Michael Bay does.

    P.S. Shyamalan even has *more Twitter followers* than Bay does.