M. Night Shyamalan’s new film Old is inspired by graphic novel Sandcastle

The latest film from M. Night Shyamalan is now in production, and the filmmaker took to his Twitter account to reveal that the film is called OLD. Shyamalan even shared some poster art for OLD, and that can be seen below.

The folks over at Collider were able to dig up the information that OLD is actually inspired by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters' French graphic novel Sandcastle (pick up a copy HERE), which Shyamalan received as a Father's Day gift a while back. The film isn't a direct adaptation of Sandcastle, so readers familiar with the book shouldn't expect Shyamalan's film to play out exactly like the story went on the page.

OLD centers on 

a group of people who find a dead body on a beach and slowly realize there is something unnatural happening on that beach.

Collider reports that Sandcastle follows 

a group of 13 people who aren’t able to leave a mysterious, secluded beach that hides a dark secret involving time, which is referenced on the Old poster. The graphic novel is described as an existential horror story about the inevitability of death that plays like a Kafka-esque episode of The Twilight Zone or Lost. 

Apparently Sandcastle doesn't explain the mystery in the end, but maybe Shyamalan's film will.

OLD stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz, and Emun Elliott.

Shyamalan is producing OLD with Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock. Steven Schneider is executive producer.

This isn't the first time Shyamalan has turned to Sandcastle for inspiration; a few years ago he revealed that the graphic novel was among the reading materials he was going through to help inspire the writing of GLASS. OLD is expected to have a lot more Sandcastle to it than GLASS did.

I haven't read Sandcastle myself, but the story sounds intriguing.
 

Source: M. Night Shyamalan, Collider

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.