M. Night Shyamalan signs big deal with Warner Bros. for his next movie, Trap

M. Night Shyamalan has a well-earned reputation as a independent agent in Hollywood, albeit one whose last five movies—the career re-invigorating, After Earth-erasing run from 2015's The Visit through this year’s Knock At The Cabin—have all been distributed by a single company. (Universal, by the by.) That’s about to change at least a little, though, as Deadline reports that Warner Bros. (on something of an odd little spending spree of late, having recently signed similar deals with Akiva Goldsman and Elvis’ Baz Luhrmann) has signed a multi-year first-look deal with Shyamalan for his next several films.

Most prominent among that list: Trap, the director’s (completely mysterious) next movie, which is currently aimed at an August 2024 release. There’s also The Watchers, which will be the directorial debut of Shyamalan’s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan; both movies are set up at Shyamalan’s Blinding Edge Pictures.

As it happens, Shyamalan has made exactly one movie with Warner Bros. to date: 2006's Lady In The Water. And while studios normally aren’t especially anxious to re-team with directors who made $76 million at the box office for a $70 million movie—regardless of how unappreciated its approach to fairy tale storytelling might be—Shyamalan’s recent track record speaks for itself: Low budgets, big box office returns. (As Deadline notes, he’s one of the rare directors to have a No. 1 opening film in four different decades of movie-making, with no apparent sign that he won’t be angling for a fifth.)

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has, to put none too fine a point on it, spent the last few years hitting its reputation with creators in the head with a shovel, first with its handling of streaming releases onto HBO Max during the COVID lockdowns, and then with all the aggressive cuts and cancellations it’s been making since it merged with Discovery. In other words, it could also use a little clout with some big-name creatives (and also Akiva Goldsman), so it’s not hard to see why the studio might want to hop onboard a Shyamalan train that gets a little further from The Last Airbender every single day.