M. Night Shyamalan has executive produced and directed a couple episodes of the Apple TV+ series Servant, which just made its premiere last week and was already renewed for a second season before the first episode had even been released. But this TV show isn't the only thing Shyamalan has going on right now. As announced back in September, he is also working on two thrillers for Universal that already have release dates scheduled.
While speaking with Collider about Servant, Shyamalan briefly discussed those two thriller projects, and said he's approaching them in the same way he has approached his most recent films:
I’m loving this approach from THE VISIT on where they’re minimal, contained, I own them, we take big tonal risks and try to hit that note of absurd-but-grounded, that dark humor moment and deal with some complicated things and not necessarily take the audience where they’re comfortable, both during or even at the end. That’s all mitigated because we’re working with a respectable number and I feel like I’m being a good partner to my distributors."
Shyamalan also mentioned that he might end up sandwiching a third film between the two that have been announced and scheduled:
…there were two ideas where right away I was thinking about making them. And, interesting enough, there might be a third thing that came to me that might end up going in between these two. So there might be three."
The filmmaker said that even if the approach he has been taking to his projects since THE VISIT has been "tricking" himself into being more "dangerous",
it’s working, because when I think about these three films that I’m thinking about — all weird and dark — I think that they speak to each other a little bit."
The approach also seems to be improving his reputation with genre fans. After hitting it big with THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE, and SIGNS, Shyamalan kind of became a joke for a while. While GLASS was divisive, THE VISIT and SPLIT have given him a nice comeback.
One of the movies Shyamalan is working on has a February 26, 2021 release date. The other is set for a February 17, 2023 release. So if he fits one in between those two, we can probably expect to see it in 2022.