M. Night Shyamalan's Next Film Is 'Old', Inspired By The French Graphic Novel 'Sandcastle'

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Over the summer, we've been hearing about the impressive ensemble cast for M. Night Shyamalan's new movie, slated for release next year. However, what we haven't heard much about is the story. Thankfully, that changes today, because not only has M. Night Shyamalan officially revealed that the movie is called Old, but he's released a teaser poster, and a new report reveals the project is based on a French graphic novel. See the poster and get the latest details on the new M. Night Shyamalan movie below.

M. Night Shyamalan announced Old as his new movie by revealing this poster (and the above image) on Twitter:

The poster has silhouettes of people falling down into a pile of more people, appearing to fall from an hourglass. It also features the tagline, "It's only a matter of time." The tagline has a double meaning since not only does it hint at the inevitability of something happening in the story, but the hourglass imagery would seem to indicate that there's an aspect involving time as well.

That's quite a vague set-up, but thankfully, Collider was able to learn even more about the movie. They've discovered that the movie is inspired by the French graphic novel Sandcastle, which Shyamalan was given as a Father's Day present. He ended up purchasing the rights to the title, and here we are. The synopsis for Sandcastle, written by Pierre Oscar Levy and illustrated by Frederik Peeters, reads:

Early morning on a perfect summer's day, people begin to descend on an idyllic, secluded beach. Among their number, a family, a young couple, a refugee and some American tourists. Its fine white sand is fringed with rock pools filled with crystal clear water. The beach is sheltered from prying eyes by green-fringed cliffs that soar around the cove. But this utopia keeps a dark secret. A woman's body is found floating in the waters, which brings these thirteen strangers together to try and unravel the riddle of the sands and escape the beach alive in this tense, fantastical mystery.

However, apparently the graphic novel is only serving as a sort of launching point for M. Night Shyamalan's Old. This won't be a direct adaptation of the graphic novel, but merely the inspiration for whatever Shyamalan has come up with. The basic story is still intact as the movie is said to follow a group of people find a dead body on a beach and come to find that there's something unnatural happening there.

Another aspect of the graphic novel that he's kept is the ensemble nature of the characters in it. Shyamalan has already cast Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliott to be in the movie, though details on their characters are under wraps.

After a bit of a creative drought, Shyamalan appeared to be back on his game with the unsettling thriller The Visit, not to mention the kidnapping thriller Split. Audiences were even more excited about Split when it turned out to be a surprise sequel to Unbreakable. That led to the conclusion of Shyamalan's comic book inspired trilogy with Glass, a movie that people either loved or hated. Now we'll have to see if a different kind of comic book inspiration can bring out the best in him again.

Shyamalan is producing Old with Ashwin Rajan through their Blinding Edge Pictures banner along with Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider is serving as executive producer. As you can see, Old is in production right now in the Dominican Republic, and Universal has already set the movie for release on July 23, 2021.