In a series of tweets, M. Night Shyamalan announced his next film as GLASS, the sequel to both his 2000 film Unbreakable and this year’s Split. The news isn’t surprising, as the director’s been hinting at a third film to pit James McAvoy’s Kevin against Bruce Willis’ David Dunn ever since Split was revealed to be a surprise sequel to Unbreakable earlier this year, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting, especially for fans who have been clamoring for the Unbreakable universe to continue.
Split, released in January, follows Kevin, a man with 23 different personalities who kidnaps three young girls (including The Witch‘s Anya Taylor-Joy) and believes people who have suffered trauma are exceptional. At the end of the film, David Dunn is seen in a diner watching a news report about Kevin.
In his tweets, Shyamalan revealed McAvoy, Willis, and Taylor-Joy will be returning for this film, as well as Samuel L. Jackson as Mr. Glass, the villain from Unbreakable who suffers from a rare disease that makes his bones fragile and prone to fractures.
He also revealed the film will be another Universal production and is set to come out on January 18, 2019.
I’m reteaming with my partners @jason_blum and @Universalpics for this crazy comic book thriller.
— M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017
Universal Pictures will release #Glass on January 18, 2019 all over the world. How’s that for not keeping a secret!
— M. Night Shyamalan (@MNightShyamalan) April 26, 2017
Unbreakable earned mostly positive reviews when it was released in 2000 and made $248 million on a $75 million budget, while Split has proven to be one of the biggest surprise hits of the year, making $274.6 million on a $9 million budget and received even better reviews than Unbreakable.
Plot details are, of course, a mystery (this is still a Shyamalan film, after all), but one thing is for certain: Glass will be a long-awaited clash of superpowers unlike anything else in the landscape of superhero films.
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor