M. Night Shyamalan Is Partnering With The Last Writer You’d Expect

M. Night Shyamalan has made almost nothing but tense thrillers. Whether it’s a kid seeing dead people, a beach that makes you old, or a whole concert that’s a trap, he can keep you on the edge of your seat. Even when he branches out, like with the modern-day fairy tale The Lady in the Water or quasi-period-drama The Village, you can still expect a fair bit of suspense.

However, that sounds like it’s about to change with Shyamalan’s next movie, which will be co-written by an equally iconic — but almost diametrically opposed — creator.

According to Variety, M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie will be a romantic thriller co-written with Nicholas Sparks, of all people, and will star Jake Gyllenhaal. Sparks is an incredibly successful romance novelist and screenwriter, writing the books behind classic romantic dramas like A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Dear John, and The Longest Ride.

As a screenwriter, Sparks only has one credit: The Last Song, which he adapted from his own novel. Sparks won’t serve as a screenwriter here, either; the story was developed by Sparks and Shyamalan, with Sparks adapting it into a book and Shyamalan turning it into a screenplay.

It’s an experimental structure, and it will be interesting to see how Spark’s book differs from Shyamalan’s script. It’s unclear to what extent this counts as an adaptation, but that’s a field Shyamalan has returned to more and more recently: Knock at the Cabin was based on The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, and Old was based on Sandcastles, a French graphic novel by Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Lévy. If those are anything to go off of, Shyamalan’s movie may have a different title than Sparks’ book.

Shyamalan may have done his fair share of adaptations, but he doesn’t have much experience with romance. Many of his films, like The Sixth Sense, Trap, and Old, focus more on the relationships between parents and children rather than romantic relationships. In 2014, Shyamalan was reportedly in talks with frequent collaborator Bruce Willis to create Labor of Love, a movie about a man walking across the country to prove his love to his late wife, but the project never materialized.

Then again, Sparks doesn’t have much experience writing taut thrillers, so it will be interesting to see how the two mesh. There will definitely be swoon-worthy moments like in The Notebook, but there will probably be a classic Shyamalan twist, too. Maybe the central couple will have been dead the whole time.