M. Night Shyamalan talks ‘Wayward Pines’

In the recent interview with Movies.com, M. Night Shyamalan answered a few questions about Wayward Pines, the special event series coming to Fox next year.

Movies.com: What’s next for you as a director?

Shyamalan: I’m doing a pilot for TV, and I’m overseeing all the writing of it, so it’s really exciting.

Movies.com: What about right now is enticing you to jump into TV for the first time?

Shyamalan: I think it was a combination of two things. Right now, in TV there’s an uptick in quality, and the kind of things that interest me in tone and character are really being celebrated, so when I look at The Killing or Homeland or Mad Men or Game of Thrones, there’s a high level of cinema going on there that’s really inspiring. And then this pilot they sent me called Wayward Pines, this specific story and the specific way it was executed really caught me. It has a Twin Peaks-y sort of vibe and I was immediately caught.

Movies.com: And Wayward Pines is being sold as a mini-event, right? Just a handful of self-contained episodes?

Shyamalan: Yeah, it’s 10 episodes, and so we’re trying to tell a story from beginning to end in those episodes. There’s always a moment where a show is just vamping, and you as a viewer can tell they’re just vamping. You want to have a sense of urgency so that people think you always have something important to say about the characters or plot, so this’ll be a good format. Hopefully it’ll be a successful venture.

The discussion continued with Collider.com:

Collider.com: So you’ve shot this then?

Shyamalan:  No, I’m going to shoot it in a couple months.

Collider.com: Right on, what can you tell people about it?

Shyamalan:  It’s starring Matt Dillon and Melissa Leo, and it’s basically a secret service agent goes to investigate the disappearance of another secret service agent who he’s had an affair with.  On the way there he gets into a car accident and when he wakes up he’s just outside this little town Wayward Pines, and he goes into the town everyone is acting incredibly weird and he soon finds out that he can’t leave.