Movies
M. Night Shyamalan Wraps Filming On ‘Unbreakable’ Sequel ‘Glass’
Long before dark superhero movies were even a thing in Hollywood, M. Night Shyamalan made one of his own with Unbreakable, released in 2000. The film was secretly a hero vs. villain superhero movie, presented in a fresh and totally unexpected way, and this year’s Split similarly had a surprise twist: it was a sequel to Unbreakable!
That Unbreakable Cinematic Universe, if you will, continues with 2019’s Glass, a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split that just finished filming in Philadelphia.
“Just wrapped #Glass!!” Shyamalan tweeted last night. “Much love to my cast & crew. Thank you for helping me tell this special story. And love to Philly for all the support!”
“At times I get emotional seeing all these characters together in one film,” he also tweeted back in October.
In the film, “Following the conclusion of SPLIT, GLASS finds David Dunn pursuing Kevin Wendell Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Elijah Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.”
Unbreakable‘s antagonist Samuel L. Jackson returns as Elijah Price/Mr. Glass, while Bruce Willis reprises his role as the film’s hero, David Dunn.
Anya Taylor-Joy, who escaped Split, also stars with James McAvoy returning as “The Beast.” Sarah Paulson rounds out the main cast.
Unbreakable star Spencer Treat Clark is back as Joseph Dunn, the son of Bruce Willis’ heroic character, while co-star Charlayne Woodard will again play Elijah Price’s mother.
Adam David Thompson (Netflix’s “Godless”) also stars.
Jason Blum and Shyamalan produce alongside Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider.
Glass will arrive on January 18, 2019.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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