Universal Pictures has decided to set Quarantine’s John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle to direct Devil, a horror movie based on a story by Sixth Sense and The Happening’s M. Night Shyamalan, and with a script by 30 Days Of Night’s Brian Nelson. Chris Messina, best known for appearing in the likes of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Julie & Julia and Away We Go, will star in the film.
At the moment the plot for the movie is being kept under wraps, but Variety reports that Messina will play the lead role of Bowden, a sobered-up homicide detective.
Devil is due to be the first film made under Shyamalan’s Night Chronicles banner (it’s amazing how he can even make the name of a production company sound annoyingly egotistical). The new company has a deal to produce one genre film a year for the next three years, which will be based on stories by Shyamalan but directed by others.
We can only pray that if he thought a tale as awful as The Happening was worth directing himself, the ones he gives away to others won’t be even worse.