Bollywood doesn’t rank high on Shyamalan’s ‘Happening’ list

He says the film is a bit like “Alfred Hitchcock’s Birds, where people are trapped in an area when something bizarre is happening”. The Happening is a crucial release for Shyamalan since his last two films, The Village and Lady In The Water, failed to impress either the critics or the audiences.

Known for his supernatural storylines and “twist” endings, Shyamalan feels his films suffer from The Sixth Sense syndrome. He’s categorical that he doesn’t want to be just known as “the guy who made six films with a twist ending”. He would rather his films clear the two crucial tests: the sip test and the take home test. “I want the audience to take one sip/one look at my film and like it, but I would much prefer that they take the film home and also see it again and again,” Shyamalan says.

A self-confessed Philly fan, Shyamalan doesn’t regard himself as a Hollywood heavyweight. “I don’t want to hear any Hollywood gossip and only go there for meetings. I’m always in Philly, either shooting my movies or playing basketball with my two girls,” he says.

He adds that he doesn’t get ruffled by critics who always thumb down his films. “I’ll go crazy if I think they love me or hate me. Pretty early on in my career I chose not to conform to the system, and now that I’ve made that choice, I’m going to take all that comes with it. They might have hated Unbreakable and Lady In The Water, but trust me, if I’m ever in a burning building, I’ll save only these two films.”

And while he awaits the critical reviews for The Happening, Shyamalan is already on to his next project, Avatar: The Last Airbender, which he’s making for Paramount Studios. This one is inspired by a Japanese children’s animation series and is sprinkled with lots of Hindu and Buddhism philosophies.

Avatar is a light film, but like Shyamalan jokes, “even if I make a comedy or a children’s film they’ll judge it as a scary movie anyway”.

But that doesn’t mean he won’t try.