MOVIE NEWS – Remain is shaping up to be an unusual romantic thriller: Jake Gyllenhaal plays a reclusive architect, M. Night Shyamalan directs, and the story was developed with romance author Nicholas Sparks. Shyamalan says the film is the highest-testing movie of his career, which is a major claim from the director of The Sixth Sense, Split, and several of Hollywood’s most divisive thrillers.
Remain is an upcoming romantic thriller with an unlikely trio at its center. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Tate Gordon, a reclusive architect. M. Night Shyamalan directs, after building his name on twisty, suspenseful thrillers such as The Sixth Sense and Split. The story is based on a 2025 novel that Shyamalan developed with famed romance author Nicholas Sparks, whose books have previously been adapted into movies such as A Walk to Remember, Dear John, and The Notebook.
In Remain, Tate moves to Cape Cod and meets a young woman named Wren, played by Phoebe Dynevor, who changes his life. That could sound like the start of a standard Nicholas Sparks romance, but Shyamalan’s side of the material quickly comes into focus: Tate is grieving the death of his sister and gets pulled into the center of a deadly mystery hanging over the town. Shyamalan discussed the project during Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation on Wednesday, where, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he explained how his collaboration with Sparks took shape.
“We started from nothing, just a couple of questions: What scares you? What moves you? What stays with you? We challenged each other. We traded ideas and slowly wove two very different perspectives into a single, thrilling, supernatural love story. In the end, we get to tell it our own way. Mine through film, Nicholas through his novel. The novel is not a novelization, and the film is not an adaptation. It’s two storytellers telling the story of Remain in their own way” – Shyamalan said of the unusual collaboration with Sparks.
“Just between us, it’s my highest-testing movie of my career. We’re now in post-production, finding every detail. Honestly, my hope is that when you experience Remain, you feel both sides of it at once – full of love and that quiet, lingering unease that doesn’t let you go” – the director added. That is not a small statement, considering that Shyamalan has directed sixteen films over the course of his career, not counting Remain, with a filmography that stretches from huge breakthroughs to heavily criticized misfires.
Shyamalan rose to prominence in the late 1990s with The Sixth Sense, then reinforced his name with films such as Signs. Later, he faced harsh criticism for movies including The Happening and The Last Airbender, before finding a steadier modern run with more recent films such as Old and Trap, one of the stronger thrillers of 2024. At this point, Shyamalan has an established record of following his own instincts, so a supernatural love story developed with a romance author feels less like a random detour and more like another attempt to make two clashing tones work on his own terms.
Shyamalan and Sparks also go back further than it may first appear. In the 1990s, Shyamalan was offered the chance to write the movie adaptation of The Notebook, but he passed so he could work on The Sixth Sense, which became his breakout film. He was also an uncredited writer on the 1999 teen romantic comedy She’s All That, meaning romance and lighter material are not entirely outside his range.
Source: MovieWeb
