Shyamalan's next movie

Variety is reporting that M. Night Shyamalan's next film won't be the Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation he's currently writing, but another thriller called The Happening. 20th Century Fox has green-lighted the film for a June 2008 release.

Apparently, the movie will be rated "R" and will be about "a family on the run from a natural crisis that presents a large-scale threat to humanity."

While I don't necessarily love everything that Shyamalan's done, I tend to like his stuff more than your average person who loved The Sixth Sense and expects him to just keep making that movie over and over again. It's a shame that folks have pegged Shyamalan as the Plot Twist Guy and go to his movies looking only for that. His movies always have a point far outside of the Twist. But it's also a shame that Shyamalan tends to play right into those expectations, even when mocking them like he did in Lady in the Water. I've been looking forward to Avatar because it's an opportunity for him to move past the Plot Twist Guy stereotype.

Still, even if his next movie is a thriller, I know that it'll be interesting and will make me think, regardless of how quickly I'm able to predict the Twist. So I'll look forward to it too.

Found via SCI FI Wire.