Despite two back to back hits during his early years in the form of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, director M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t exactly had a successful career. After those two films, it was mostly one flop after another for over a decade, turning the once great filmmaker into something of a joke. Lately, however, he’s been taking some serious steps to turn things around.
His television series Wayward Pines had an exciting first season, even if it did show its cards too soon and delivered an underwhelming second outing. Then there’s Split, which hits theatres this month and has James McAvoy playing a man with 24 different personalities. Reviews aren’t in just yet, but it certainly seems promising and will hopefully signal a return to form for the director.
Casting his eye towards the future, Shyamalan recently sat down with Digital Spy to discuss his latest effort and revealed that he’d love to direct an episode of Stranger Things, saying that he spoke with the Duffer brothers (who are behind the Netflix hit) and told them he’d like to get involved:
“My boys [the Duffers] who do Stranger Things, they did Wayward Pines for me,” he said. “They were round my house and I was like, ‘Well, you can hire me back guys!'”
Further in the interview, the director also touched on his Tales from the Crypt reboot, saying that he still hopes to make it but the rights issues are getting in the way.
“I really want to do that and hopefully I still will, but it’s hugely complicated,” he explained. “It’s particularly difficult because of the rights issues. There are so many estates involved and people involved from the original. I love the comics [which inspired the original series] – that show was a big deal to me… it was taboo, it was like porn! In my immigrant house, I had to go to my friend’s house to watch Tales from the Crypt, so it represented a huge thing for me.”
Admittedly, a show like Stranger Things is right up Shyamalan’s alley and we’d be all for him coming in to direct. His name doesn’t hold the goodwill that it once did, but perhaps if Split goes over well and Tales from the Crypt gets off the ground, he can start to reclaim some of his former glory and maybe even land a spot behind the camera on the next season of Netflix’s binge worthy show.
We’ll agree with just about everyone else that the director’s career hasn’t been terribly impressive over the last decade or so, but there’s still a talented filmmaker in there somewhere, one who’d be perfectly suited to the sci-fi horrors of Stranger Things.
