Joaquin Phoenix in Talks to Star in M. Night Shyamalan’s Next Movie

Are you ready for an M. Night Shyamalan comeback?

It was a tough couple years for Shyamalan. Just as fast as he rose to prominence as the director of movies like The Sixth Sense and Signs he fell back to Earth with a series of costly and critically derided flops like The Happening and After Earth. But Shyamalan kept plugging away even in the face of naysayers, and his stock is quietly on the rise. His next movie, The Visit, looks promising, and his TV series, Wayward Pines, is a hit. Now Deadline reports we could be on the verge of a full-blown Shyamalanaissance with a new movie, filming this fall, that will likely star Joaquin Phoenix.

The film would reunite the actor and director, who previously made Signs and the not-entirely-terrible The Village together. Not surprisingly, Deadline doesn’t have much information on the movie’s story, but they say that the project “will be on the lower end of the budgetary scale, more in keeping with The Visit (budgeted at $5 million and fully financed by Shyamalan) than, say, the likes of The Last Airbender ($150 million).” The movie would be produced by Jason Blum, one of Hollywood’s hottest producers of small-scale horror.

I haven’t had many positive things to say about Shyamalan’s recent work, but at his best, the man is a legitimate talent. He seemed to misplace that spark of brilliance for a while (and maybe started to believe his own hype just a bit too intensely), but when his movies work they really work. And Joaquin Phoenix is still one of the best actors in Hollywood; just the sort of guy you’d want headlining your big comeback project, which is currently scheduled to go into production in November.