Shyamalan’s ONE THOUSAND A.E. Gets Script Polish

I’m rooting for M. Night Shyamalan, I really am.

I know that it is currently hip to crap on the guy for his last couple of films. But you have to admit that the films that made him a household name in non-film geek homes – The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs – are all stellar films and I think that he still has it in him to create works of tat caliber again.

(And before we go any further, if you point out the whole “aliens and water” thing from Signs as a reason it was bad, you are missing the whole point of the story.)

Could Shyamalan’s next film, the futuristic action flick One Thousand A.E., be his shot at cinematic redemption? Possibly. It will be the first film that he has directed where he will not be the sole screenwriter. The original writer on the project is Gary Whitta, who gave us last year’s The Book Of Eli. Granted, Shyamalan did his own rewrite on it’s story of a father and son who crash land their spaceship on Earth a thousand years after it is had been deserted by humanity for new homes amongst the stars. But now it is being reported that Stephen Gaghan has just turned in a polish of that draft to Sony Pictures. With winning an Academy Award for Traffic and getting an Oscar nomination for Syriana to his credit, Gaghan is no slouch in the writing department.

I think at this stage of the game we can be safely optimistic about this film. But even if it turns out good, the studio may still have a problem selling the movie to a public for whom Shyamalan’s name has come to mean something far different than it used to.

Will and Jaden Smith are set to star in the film which Sony has scheduled for a July 2013 release.

Via Variety.

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About Rich Drees 7296 Articles
A film fan since he first saw that Rebel Blockade Runner fleeing the massive Imperial Star Destroyer at the tender age of 8 and a veteran freelance journalist with twenty-five years experience writing about film and pop culture. He is a member of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle.
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