20th Century Fox has given the green light to M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a spec script thriller that Shyamalan wrote and will direct in Philadelphia this August. Variety says Fox is targeting a June, 2008 release for the film.

Finally something rated R from Shyamalan. He needs a recovery film, especially after the disaster that was The Village. I haven't seen Lady in the Water yet, but I ain't heard too many good things. Hopefully this will be good. Hopefully he'll play up the paranoid thriller portion of the script more than this greenhouse gas monster thing they're all running from, otherwise this'll be stupid.

He needs to prove that he still knows what he's doing. I have faith, not much, but some. Hopefully he'll come out of this one on top.


Cheers, Chismeister.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Mark Wahlberg has signed on to star in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller The Happening.

Quoted from Hollywood Reporter "Happening" centers on a family on the run from an apocalyptic threat to humanity. Wahlberg will play Elliot Moore, the science teacher at the center of this event. Shyamalan wrote the original screenplay and will produce with Sam Mercer and Barry Mendel. Production is set to begin in August in Philadelphia.

ComingSoon.net has the first look at the brand new teaser poster for the flick:

http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/The_Happening/large/hr_The_Happening_poster.jpg


Matt.

The tagline like...rips Signs off. Still, the poster is sweet.

-Chris

And also the Sixth Sense.

Quoted from Elmer The tagline like...rips Signs off.

Quoted from Toran And also the Sixth Sense.

Both of which are Shyamalan films.

I think that's the point of the tagline. Referencing a couple of his past films (his two most financially successful ones I might add). I don't think they're "ripping off anyone".


Matt.

I wasn't agreeing with him, just adding that the Sixth Sense is in there.

I meant that the tagline "We've seen the signs" was like...the exact tagline as Signs the movie. Not a big deal...just pointing it out.

-chris

Ain’t It Cool News has the teaser trailer for The Happening. Looks promising.

Looks good to me. It's got me curious.

~Zack~

I'm really excited for this, while I love all of Shyamalan's films (and THE VILLAGE is my favourite, I will defend it til my dying breath ;)), only THE SIXTH SENSE and SIGNS have had commercial and critical success simultaneously. This looks like a return to something more mainstream so hopefully it will have similar results. The R rating might hold it back somewhat, but I'm interested to see what he does with more leg-room, since he's managed to give me pretty good scare with a PG13! And you can never have too much of James Newton Howard, he's effing incredible.

Plus, its release date is perfect; it has the whole Friday the 13th gimmick going for it, and it comes out the week of my birthday :D.

I for one am psyched.

I'm eager for the James Newton Howard score and will but it right away, but am extremely wary of the film. I'll wait and see.

I saw the trailer for this when I went to see Iron Man earlier this month (awesome, BTW). Iron Man was the only movie playing at the theater. There was about 500 people in the audience and when the title of this one popped up, the entire audience burst into laughter. Not that great of a title, is it? Actually, I think it is. It's uneventful, sure, but considering the people in the movie just start dying for apparently no reason whatsoever, it seems entirely appropriate. As far as I can tell, this is a movie about nothing. The Village was a movie about nothing but marketed as a monster movie. This one looks like Cloverfield without a monster. What the hell is this movie about? Anybody?

Quoted from James McClung This one looks like Cloverfield without a monster. What the hell is this movie about? Anybody?

POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Ye be warned.

It's about the environment. The big scary thing everyone is running from in the trailers are trees and plants and wind and clouds of gas.

What I don't like about this guy is that his movies look way too glossy to be scary. He thinks he's the next HP Lovecraft because his plots are bizarre. Pfft. You need more than that. Even if you have a great story to tell, it isn't worth shit if you don't know how to represent it well.

The only good movie that I have seen of his is the Sixth Sense. I thought Signs was horrible and so was The Village, even though I did not hate it as much as other people. I did not bother with Lady in the Water because I can smell crap a mile away. But I'll be watching this one simply because I love post-apocalyptic tales.

--Julio

It's odd that new previews are promoting that Shyamalan "brings us his first R rated film".

Okay so now the RATING is a selling point? Is that a sign that Fox has little confidence in the picture now?

You know...this movie doesn't really look that interesting.  There's been an unfortunate trend for Shymalamaladingdong as his marketing skills have really deteriorated since the Sixth Sense...or maybe it's just because his films haven't been that good.

Sixth Sense was great...I see dead people...brilliant.

Unbreakable the following year...there's two reasons why I'm staring at you like this.  The first is that it seems in a matter of moments you will be the sole survivor of this train crash.  And the second reason I'm staring at you is that there's not a scratch on you.  Pretty good.  The film wasn't as successful but people talked.

I loved Signs.  I loved the trailer from the second I saw it.  It also scored huge at the box office.

The Village IMO is where he started to bomb.  The film had a huge opening weekend despite bad reviews, and then word of mouth got out that, yeah, this film kinda sucks, and that was it.

Lady in the Water didn't do anything with the critics or box office.  Didn't even bother to see this one.

And then you got this new film with a horribly unoriginal title and the trailers that don't really tell you anything.  If it came out today, I'd say it would do even worse than Lady in the Water.  As Roger Ebert said after the Village came out, he needs to take a break.

I read the script last year, originally named "The Green Effect", and it wasn't that great. I'm a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan, and I thoroughly enjoyed Lady in The Water, despite what the critics say. SPOILERS... The story is based around a science teacher, Elliot Moore who has grown apart from his wife (infedelity is involved). Then, strange things start to happen such as people stabbing themselves and builders jumping from buildings, pretty eerie stuff. It turns out the plants and so on are fighting against humans. The relationship with him and his wife acts as a good subplot to the main plot, but the scripts overall form was completely done to formula, with nothing really being that unpredictable. It was an ok script, but as I say I read this a while ago and changes will probably have been made.