m night shyamalan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If it's not trailers, it's teasers; if it's not teasers; it's images. By the time a blockbuster finally arrives, if you haven't heard so much about it that you want to scream -- from overload or delight -- the studio's marketing team hasn't done their job. But how early is too early to begin promoting a movie?

Pointing to this week's release of a teaser trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, more than a year in advance of its planned theatrical roll-out in July 2010, The Big Money wonders if that's a good strategy: "How do you keep interest high then over the long autumn, winter, and spring? By producing trailer after trailer? Hollywood will watch this strategy closely to see at what point trailer fatigue sets in or whether it needs to build interest even earlier in its expensive summer blockbusters." Of course, as io9 observed, this isn't a new strategy; The Incredibles got teased 18 months in advance and Star Trek 16 months early (due in part to a release delay). Watchmen tried a different strategy that seemed to work, releasing behind the scenes clips (or "video journals") each month in the year leading up to its theatrical debut.

How do you pique interest and build awareness without potential viewers feeling like the movie's being jammed down their throats? Is it better to wait until closer to the release date? Are too many trailers and other advance promotional devices causing you to suffer from "trailer fatigue"? How early do you want to start seeing teasers and trailers?

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday that nears, it seemed only fitting that our minds turned to those films for which we are most unexpectedly grateful, those flops and duds, those bombs and turkeys rife with unintentional humor and renewed entertainment values. Now, we've pretty much stuck with the past decade or so with our picks; anything before that has either been done right by MST3K or is probably titled Showgirls.

With that said, please enjoy this Cinematical Seven responsibly, and do feel free to contribute your own personal favorite howlers of late in the comments below...

1. Twilight (2008)

Oh, dear God, I'm kidding. J/K!

Fans of the world's most famous writer-director based in Philadelphia need not fear. Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan is not abandoning his creative work as a writer and director in favor of restricting himself to production duties. He has, however, formed a new partnership to produce one thriller per year for three years, according to Variety.

M. Night "typically generates more movie ideas than he can execute." The terms of his deal with Media Rights Capital (MRC) mean that M. Night will "create the stories and ideas for the films and pick the writers and directors; MRC will finance." This won't affect his next directorial project, The Last Airbender, which is still set for release by Paramount in 2010.

My first thought was that M. Night is following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg. You might remember that Spielberg created the TV series Amazing Stories in part because he had so many story ideas that he couldn't do himself. He ended up writing or developing 29 stories (out of 45 episodes). Interestingly, Eric Kohn asked M. Night in an interview last month if it wouldn't be easier for him to "go the independent route." Even though the filmmaker said he's "never had an issue with studios," this sounds like a big step in the independent direction.

And here's a quote that might warm the heart of anyone, including myself, who has been cool about his recent work: "Working with the next wave of innovative filmmakers will teach me many things that I can bring to my own writing/directing and give my stories the opportunity to be brought to the screen in a stunning way."

In the Hollywood variation on a classic proverb, whom the gods would destroy they first make successful. So it's been for writer director M. Night Shyamalan, where the breakout success of The Sixth Sense first suggested he could do no wrong and then his later films suggested, in dribs and drabs, that he in fact could. The minor missteps in the otherwise-watchable Unbreakable, Signs and The Village were one thing; eventually, Shyamalan's status as a unquestionable talent culminated in Lady in the Water, a textbook example of what can happen when a filmmaker becomes so used to proceeding without supervision that they go right off the steep cliffs of self-indulgence with a full head of steam.

However, it seemed that even M. Night knew this, and looked to be retrenching with The Happening, promising us R-rated chills and thrills and goosebumps. And after actually seeing The Happening, it has to be said that the film's a perfectly fine summertime chiller, one that avoids the excesses and errors in judgment that unmade Lady in the Water but also one without the vision and excellence of The Sixth Sense. It's not that The Happening is bad, as such -- although there are a few fairly off moments in it -- it's more that I found myself wishing, on more than one occasion, that Shyamalan could forget about plucking the audience's heartstrings and instead just keep going for the jugular. I wanted The Happening's tension at a higher pitch so that I wasn't puzzling over plot holes and questionable character decisions while actually sitting in the theater; The Happening simmers when you want it to boil, smolders when you want it to burn.

He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

I was out carousing around my fave blogs today, looking for something interesting to write about (hey, it's a slow news day) when I came across this post over on Mike Jones's The Circuit blog on Variety about a guy trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.

The New Yorker website has a time-lapse video up of this poor dude who went for a smoke break and then got stuck in the damn elevator. The video is kind of harrowing if you, like me, are prone to claustrophobia and already have an irrational fear of elevators. A commenter on The Circuit noted that the video is better than most of the shorts he'd juried recently for fests, which got me thinking ...

Variety is reporting that Mark Wahlberg has just signed to star in M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller, The Happening. Shyamalan has a lot to prove this time out. Audiences were ready to forgive the ludicrous ending of the otherwise pretty neat The Village, but nobody could have expected the full-on disaster that was Lady in the Water, a film that recently "won" Shyamalan two Razzie awards. The Happening will be an apocalyptic story and will likely be his first "R" rated film. Wahlberg will play "a man who takes his family on the run when the world turns upside and a cataclysmic natural crisis threatens to end the world. " 20th Century Fox will release the film worldwide on June 13th (that's Friday the 13th, y'all! Spooooky!) of next year.

Marky Mark has turned into quite the actor, and he's worked with several of the most interesting directors working today. To name just a few, he's acted for Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights, Jonathan Demme in The Truth About Charlie, Tim Burton in Planet of the Apes (Boo!), David O. Russell in Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees -- a production that seems to have just been a dream to work on, and Martin Scorsese in The Departed -- which I recently told you also didn't go so smoothly. Just last month it was announced that he will co-star with Matt Damon in Darren Aronofsky's The Fighter. And now Shyamalan, who I sincerely hope will get his groove back with The Happening. I think if he'd just get that ego in check, he could be one of our best directors. The Happening starts shooting in Philadelphia this August.

"Mark has a unique blend of charisma, humanity, authenticity and skillfulness as an actor," Shyamalan says. "All of which coalesced at this moment in his career, making him the perfect person to take on the role of Eliot Moore, the science teacher at the center of this event."

Not only is M. Night Shyamalan moving from (Disney to) Warner Bros. to Fox for his next project ... but it''ll be the guy's first R-rated movie, too! After shopping around a screenplay called The Green Effect, M. Night took some tips from colleagues, re-jiggered the script, re-named it The Happening, and landed himself a sweet deal at Fox. According to Variety, The Happening will be apocalyptic in nature, perhaps on scale with the studio's Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Expect the movie to hit theaters in June of 2008.

Mr. Shyamalan will head back to Philadelphia (yay!) in August to start shooting his new movie, and we're promised a "big name" for the lead role. The trade paper also states that the Happening budget will be $57 million, and also that the plot will be "a paranoid thriller about a family on the run from a natural crisis that presents a large-scale threat to humanity." One of the selling points on this particular project is that both Shyamalan and Fox chief Tom Rothman wanted to really "up" the scariness, thus resulting in a project that'll be M. Night's first R-rated effort. The controversial thriller-maker made reference to both Silence of the Lambs and Pan's Labyrinth while describing his vision of The Happening ... which makes me both skeptical and curious. Either way, I guess we'll have to wait a bit longer for Night's Avatar and He-Man projects, which is just fine by me.

Since he films all of his movies in and around my beloved home town of Philadelphia, I've always had a real soft spot for M. Night Shyamalan. I still believe that The Sixth Sense is a damn good film, that Unbreakable is a still-unheralded masterpiece, and that Signs is a pretty slick "reality-based" sci-fi thriller. But after suffering through The Village and Lady in the Water, I'm beginning to wish the guy would move on to Baltimore, Boston or another east coast city. (Nah, not really. It's pretty cool to have a "local filmmaker" of Shyamalan's talent and influence.)

But a few weeks back M. Night "won" a pair of Razzies for worst director and worst supporting actor, one of which I don't think he really deserved ... but that supporting actor slap, yeah, I can get behind that one. Apparently the self-admiring movie-maker didn't even hear about his Lady in the Water Razzies (yeah, right) and it took a reporter from New York Magazine to spill those beans. And Nighty got just a little bit defensive: "Look, I loved that movie. It's a beautiful, beautiful movie. So there's some disconnect from the intention to the perception of it. I hope, just with time, that will ease. All of my movies have benefited from time."

OK, so maybe in 62 years Lady in the Water will be the new Casablanca ... but I really freaking doubt it. It's a ponderous, indulgent and (bottom line) silly movie that the critics disliked and the audiences pretty much ignored. But hey, one or two failures in a row can often lead to a big-time comeback project that everyone rallies behind and adores. For the record, Shyamalan is presently working on adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender and (yes) He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ... so I wouldn't exactly hold my breath waiting for that big comeback love-fest.

[via Hollywood Wiretap]

So after years of waiting, wondering and whining, now we get the word from George Lucas himself. The as-yet-untitled Indiana Jones 4 will begin shooting next year. Seems that Lucas and Steven Spielberg have finally signed off on a screenplay they like, and Paramount has already circled May 2008 for the release date. Obviously Harrison Ford will be returning to play the globe-trotting troublemaker, most likely for one last hurrah ... but boy it'll be fun, I bet.

That's all the real news we've gotten so far, but stop by ComingSoon.net to see their full report.

For those who've been living exclusively in the arthouses for the past twenty years, Indiana Jones is the swaggering hero found in three Steven Spielberg films: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). All three flicks represent a whole lot of old-fashioned adventure-time fun, but it's the original that still holds up as maybe one of the best movies ever made. (It just never gets old. Trust me.)

Long in development, the fourth chapter has been semi-promised for ages, and the lengthy screenwriting process has involved the likes of Tom Stoppard, M. Night Shyamalan, Chris Columbus, Frank Darabont, Jeff Nathanson and David Koepp -- although I bet there were even more than that. Rumors have been running rampant about the project for years (Kevin Costner as Indy's brother!?!) but just last week Lucas said "It's going to be the best one yet."

Yeah, we'll see about that.