I've been crying out for a sequel to M. Night Shyamalan's rather brilliant Unbreakable for over four years now and even though he and star Bruce Willis tease and flirt with the further adventures of David Dunn every now and again - I was always under the impression that the stumbling block was Disney having no faith in the property as a franchise. Which to this day continuously proves to be hard for me to fathom. Granted - the original didn't set the world alight with Sixth Sense numbers (though it crucially still turned in a profit) - a $248 million global gross from a $75 million budget still should have been enough for another roll of the dice. How Disney let this franchise gather dust whilst every superhero property under the sun were/are getting development deals and many making HUGE profits, was/is kinda beyond me. Curiously this week, the eccentric M.Night told MTV's Josh Horowitz that we haven't yet seen an Unbreakable 2 simply because he 'can't come up with an idea'. Though Horowitz, like any keen Unbreakable fan would, then quickly questions the director and ponders the 'didn't you have a whole trilogy mapped out?' response, to which M. Night responded with;
"I cannibalized the idea for the sequel to 'Unbreakable' for one of the 'Night Chronicles,'"
The 'Night Chronicles' being his ultimate gesture of self-grandiosity, an 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' style film series where he produces low-budget horror stories based on his own ideas for young upstarters to direct. It's similar to the practice Guillermo Del Toro and Eli Roth have been preaching lately, such as today's The Last Exorcism release. M. Night says;
"It was such a cool idea for a villain, and it was actually originally in the script for 'Unbreakable,' and it was too much. There were too many villains, so I pulled this villain out and was like, 'I'll make this the second flick.'"
To be clear - the first film in M.Night's series is the elevator thriller Devil (released stateside in two weeks and whose trailer is being laughed out of U.S. theatres) -- which will then be followed by Twelve Strangers (a riff on Twelve Angry Men but if the case they were debating had supernatural elements, helmed by Last Exorcism's Daniel Stamm) -- and now presumably a low-budget super-villain movie that won't be an official sequel to Unbreakable - won't star Bruce Willis or the character David Dunn - and won't be helmed by M. Night Shyamalan. Which very likely, and very sadly - is the closest we will ever get to an Unbreakable 2. Is it the movie that got away? You betcha.