M. Night Shyamalan Says Remain, His Supernatural Romance with Nicholas Sparks, Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor, Is the Highest-Testing Movie of His Career
· Thought Catalog
Updated 3 minutes ago, September 11, 2026
The collaboration closes a decades-old loop. Producers once approached the then-unknown filmmaker about adapting The Notebook, but he passed while making The Sixth Sense.
Shyamalan and Sparks conceived one story together, then split off to tell it in two forms at the same time, a novel and a film built from the same seed. Sparks published his version in October 2025 and has called them “fraternal twins. Not identical.”
Jake Gyllenhaal plays an architect building a house on Cape Cod who meets a mysterious woman, played by Phoebe Dynevor. Shyamalan kept his actors from reading the novel because the characters had already evolved in different directions.
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The first trailer arrived this week, ahead of a February 5, 2027 release that was moved from fall 2026. Shyamalan says he hopes audiences leave feeling “both sides of it at once — full of love and that quiet, lingering unease that doesn’t let you go.”
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