M. Night Fans » Night Chronicles

Devil: One of the top horror films of 2010

Rohan — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:56:45 +0000

This nice guy, Jeff Allard of shocktillyoudrop has listed his top 5 horror movies of 2010 and also his worst ones. You are welcome to check out his whole list of top and the worst, but what we at Mnightfans got more intrigued is that Devil is listed under his top 5 horror films of 2010. You can read below what he has to say about the film, Devil. An idea from the mind of you know who.

M. Night Shyamalan’s reputation as an Alfred Hitchcock or a Rod Serling for a new generation has been eroding for years, with films like The Village (2004) and The Happening (2008) getting derisive responses from audiences. Even though he didn’t direct Devil, just the sight of Shyamalan’s name as producer was enough for many audiences to boo the trailers for Devil, the first in a proposed anthology series dubbed The Night Chronicles. When Devil – directed by John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine, 2008) – was released this past September, though, the skepticism towards it was largely dispelled. Based on a story concept by Shyamalan (with a screenplay by Brian Nelson), Devil harkened back to classic Twilight Zone, showing a refreshing sense of narrative economy. Where Shyamalan’s films have long been accused of being overblown, Devil was modest in every regard. A pleasing slice of old-school supernatural hokum, Devil was a promising move in the right direction for Shyamalan. Perhaps when the trailer for the next installment of The Night Chronicles arrives, audiences won’t be so quick to jeer his name.

Give us your opinions about the Devil. What do you think about the first chapter in Night Chronicles and are you stoked about the upcoming thriller from The Night Chronicles?

Devil: Own it now on Blu-ray/DVD

Rohan — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:28:59 +0000

You can own Devil now on BLU-RAY, DVD, DIGITAL DOWNLOAD and ON DEMAND as well. An idea comes from the mind of master of suspense, M.Night Shyamalan and directed by John Erick Dowdle. The film is written for screen by Brian Nelson. Devil is the first chapter under THE NIGHT CHRONICLES, a production entity with Media Rights Capital, focused on generating a series of supernatural thrillers.

In case you don’t know anything about the film, it’s a story about five strangers trapped in a elevator high above Philadelphia. They discover slowly that the devil is among them and no one can escape their fate. This chilling supernatural thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to a heart-stopping ending with a truly wicked twist.

You can read our DEVIL review here and go here if you want to know more about the Blu-ray/DVD features.

Night Chronicle’s ‘Reincarnate’ has an updated plot

Rohan — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 23:54:10 +0000

Reincarnate is an another idea which comes from the mind of M.Night Shyamalan once again for his Night Chronicles production banner. Devil was the first chapter and Reincarnate is going to be the second chapter under his new production company. The film is written for screen by Chris Sparling (Buried) and playwright/screenwriter Paul Grellong both have been working on the thriller. And it’s going to be directed by Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism). The film is slated to shoot in 2011.

According ‘The Night Chronicles” official website they have an updated plot for the film. And it goes like this: “While deciding the fate of an accused murderer… a jury is haunted by supernatural forces that hold the key to the case”. That’s interesting. Give us your thoughts on the plot below and you all know how to stalk us on facebook and twitter also.

Box office update: ‘Devil’ earns over $50M worldwide

Rohan — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:02:43 +0000

Well, it seems like lots of people were interested to meet the devil who is on earth to test evildoers by tormenting them. DEVIL is a story from the mind of M.Night Shyamalan, directed by John Erick Dowdle and written for screen by Brian Nelson just in case some of you don’t know about the film. Devil is the first chapter in Night Chronicles Series, a production banner Shyamalan opened and signed some projects with Media Rights Capital. Devil is about a story of five strangers trapped in a elevator and among them is standing the devil, but who is it?

According to Boxofficemojo, Devil has earned so far over $33M in domestic box office and over $17M in foreign box office. Currently devil stands over $50M in worldwide box office total impressively, as its estimated production budget is somewhere around $10M. The film is still playing in theatres worldwide and it’s also going to be released on DVD/Blu-ray on December 21st, 2010.

M.Night Shyamalan Interviews

Rohan — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:22:54 +0000

Thanksgiving is over and hope you guys had a good one with your relatives and friends. This weekend I have been searching the net for some important Shyamalan interviews and I selected 3 good ones which are not that long, but they are useful if you are an aspiring writer or director. The first video is from Devil Premiere which we never posted before. And the last 3 videos are 3 part interviews with Rajeev Masand where Shyamalan talks about his personal life a little bit, The Happening, Lady In The Water, The Last Airbender, The Sixth Sense and all other controversial remarks against him. Check them out. They are not new interviews, but I find them interesting. And make sure to post your comments and let us know your thoughts.

Thanks to ChannelApa for the following video.

The following are 3 part interview with Rajeev Masand. Enjoy!

Daniel Stamm: A new breed in movie business

Rohan — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:26:50 +0000

Los Angeles Times/Entertainment/24 Frames published an article a week ago regarding M.Night Shyamalan’s new protege. filmmaker Daniel Stamm. Weeks back it was announced that Shyamalan has considered Mr. Stamm to helm his next supernatural thriller under “The Night Chronicles” banner which is going to be the second picture under the new banner called “12 Strangers” then its title changed to “Reincarnate”. I found the article very useful and thanks to LA TIMES for the brief coverage on who exactly is Daniel Stamm.

The first time Daniel Stamm met M. Night Shyamalan, the auteur of the supernatural was fiddling with a horn section.

“I got a call from my agents that Night is in town scoring ‘The Last Airbender,’” said the German-born, L.A.-based Stamm, who directed this summer’s horror sleeper ‘The Last Exorcism.” “He wants to meet you in an hour. And so I went down to the scoring stage, and James Newton Howard is there with a 110-piece orchestra, and Night is totally engaged as he talks to me, but every once in a while he’ll turn around and say something like, ‘Can we have the trombone louder?’”

Soon after, Stamm was on a plane to Shyamalan’s Philadelphia farmhouse. He was told he was being considered for the second movie in The Night Chronicles — the trio of films Shyamalan is shepherding that kicked off with this fall’s “Devil” – but wasn’t told anything about it. Instead, in keeping with the filmmaker’s trademark secrecy, Stamm was given a script, shown a locked room and instructed to stay there until he finished. Then he was told to give notes to Night.

The two proceeded to discuss the script (knowing Stamm, with a certain enthusiastic contrarianism). Whatever the young filmmaker said, it worked: He got the gig.

The 34-year-old Stamm represents what might be called a new breed in the movie business, particularly in its genre precincts. He’s a younger talent who makes commercial movies but whose vision was honed outside Hollywood (he studied at a film school in Ludwigsburg, Germany, before coming to the American Film Institute); who can stretch a dollar (“Exorcism,” the story of a possessed farmer’s daughter produced by Eli Roth, was made for less than $2 million and grossed more than 20 times that in the U.S.); and who can be paired up with more established filmmakers who serve as producers while he directs.

With Shyamalan, Stamm describes a relationship that’s a mix of the hands-off and the interactive. “Night is aware of the person that he is, and the challenge for him is to keep himself out and be there as a mentor,” Stamm says over coffee at a Los Feliz restaurant on a recent morning. “He’ll never tell me to do this or that, but if he has ideas he will call and I just had this idea, ‘What do you think of this?’ He’s an idea guy. It’s always about little bits of inspiration.”

The new Night movie that Stamm will direct is a riff on a certain Henry Fonda jury-deliberation classic – one that won’t be new terrain to non-genre fans, and probably not to most genre fans either. “It’s basically a supernatural take on ’12 Angry Men.’ It’s that movie but with reincarnation,” Stamm says. “We’re in the [deliberation] room but it’s not so confined that we never leave the room.”

Surely Stamm is aware, though, that people hold the Sidney Lumet-directed original close to their hearts and might balk at a re-imagining?

“It’s like ‘The Exorcist’ with ‘The Last Exorcism,’” he explains. “Both are classics that people still have on their minds so you don’t want to step on that. But there’s no reason not to acknowledge it.

“Our protagonist can borrow from it as long as someone in the movie catches him borrowing from it,” says Stamm (who also, incidentally, is directing an upcoming remake of of the French horror hit ”Martyrs”).

Stamm said that after his last movie, he needs to shoot this one a little differently — with an eye toward how it can be marketed. (It’s no doubt not lost on him that “Devil” was a commercial disappointment, as were several recent Shyamalan directing efforts.)

“With ‘Exorcism’ it was so intimate that we never thought about rating, we thought about target audience, we never though about trailer moments. Everything about studio movies we completely disregarded,” Stamm says. “But I think it’s smart to think about these moments instead of realizing in editing you don’t have them and then going to the marketing department and saying, ‘What do we do now?’”

Stamm says after working with unknowns in his previous films (before “Exorcism,” he shot a dark micro-budget film about suicide titled “A Necessary Death”), he’d like to work with more known actors. While some genre filmmakers say they find that big actors can be distracting to an audience (and expensive for their budget), he’s hoping to turn that wisdom on its head.

“I’m excited to work with and against perception,” he says. “I’ve love to do a serial movie with Michael Cera as the serial killer.”

There’s something unexpected about Stamm’s own turn. His roots began far away from Hollywood, in a Hamburg childhood where he was constantly telling his parents he wanted to be a journalist, not a writer of fictional stories, because of a German cultural norm that emphasizes the practical. But in truth he didn’t really want to be a reporter — he wanted to be a screenwriter. (Good choice, Dan.)

Stamm also says that filmmaking gave him a sense of creation few other adulthood pursuits have. “In Germany we played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. We were big nerds. But it was an amazing youth. It was trying to think something into existence that didn’t exist a minute before,” he says.

He continues. “There’s just something godlike about the whole act of filmmaking. It was like giving birth. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the thing that men can’t have children.” Unless, of course, they’re starring in a horror movie.

DEVIL Blu-ray and DVD

Rohan — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 03:52:51 +0000

It seems like we are going to spend this Christmas with the DEVIL for you can get your hands on Blu-ray and DVD on December 21st. Devil is a story of five strangers trapped in a elevator and among them is the Devil. A story from the mind of M.Night Shyamalan, written for screen by Brian Nelson and directed by John Erick Dowdle.

BONUS MATERIAL:

– The Devil’s Meeting featurette
– The Story featurette
– The Night Chronicles featurette
– BD-Live features (Blu-ray only)
– Digital Copy (Blu-ray only)

Theatrical release dates: November 12th, the film opens in theatres in Spain. Nov 25th in Germany. Nov 26th in Brazil, Poland and Sweden. December 2nd in Australia. Belgium March 23rd and March 25th in Norway.

DEVIL visits homes for holiday.

Rohan — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:43:17 +0000

THE NIGHT CHRONICLES, supernatural thriller ‘Devil’ directed by John Erick Dowdle, written for screen by Brian Nelson and a story from the mind of M.Night Shyamalan is heading on its way to DVD/Blu-ray on December. Video ETA reports you can expect the M.Night Shyamalan-produced film on December 21st. Devil was released in theatres on September 17th, 2010 and has grossed over $43M worldwide till date.

Check back soon for confirmation, cover art and a list of bonus content.

Exclusive Shyamalan Interview

Rohan — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 01:50:39 +0000

Just few weeks back my cool friend “Patrick Samuel” the film editor from this new cool site known as “STATIC MASS EMPORIUM” had the chance to sit for an exclusive interview with the master of suspense none other than M.Night Shyamalan. He had the opportunity to meet Shyamalan at THE LAST AIRBENDER UK press conference where they talked about meeting some time later and since M.Night Shyamalan being true to his word, he called Patrick for a 40 minute interview where they talked about everything, from Unbreakable 2 to God and DEVIL. This is the first part of the interview where M.Night Shyamalan goes deep to discuss all things God and Devil.

Anyone who has looked at Night’s films, I mean really looked at them, will see a common theme which runs through them. The Sixth Sense (19990, Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004) Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008) and The Last Airbender (2010) all had it; the idea of people with remarkable hidden powers and the responsibilities which come with that power.

PATRICK: Is this theme continued in Devil?

NIGHT: Devil for me is that we choose to get on that elevator. By our lack of taking responsibility for things that happen to us in our lives. “Oh I lost that job”, “Screw that boss, he always had it in for me!” and not taking responsibility for whatever you can be responsible for in that matter. Ultimately, the people who end up in that elevator have not taken responsibility for themselves or the things that have happened to them in their lives. The good decisions, the bad decisions, they haven’t taken responsibility in total. When I realise that as a human being, I feel very free. Let’s say something bad happens to me and I go “I’m responsible for that. That person did something really bad to me, but I’m responsible for that”. Then thinking how was I responsible, if my demeanour was different this way, if I hadn’t done this, if I had reacted in a different way”. You feel very free. Thematically, that’s where Devil is coming from. Of course, on the surface everyone’s gonna see a really scary rollercoaster ride!

If you’ve seen the trailer and the clips of Devil, there certainly seems to be a menacing tone, a malevolent force at work against these people trapped in the elevator. Night seems to be addressing not only ideas about power, responsibility and the nature of evil, but also the existence of God.

PATRICK: Is this something you also personally struggled with?

NIGHT: The word “God” as its used, I’m not sure if that’s something I’d go with or that I think that that’s the correct definition of it. I definitely think there’s some kind of energy that’s present in nature and in us, something in the universe that when you get in rhythm with it, things, really good things happen and when you’re not in rhythm with it, really bad things happen.

PATRICK: It definitely, for me, feels like it’s something inside. And it seems to me that so many people are stuck looking for it on the outside.

NIGHT: You know, what you just said is my whole issue with religion! That right there, what you just said, is that religion teaches us that all this good stuff is outside of us and its something else and it’s not in us and I don’t subscribe to that.

Night, who was born in India, moved to the United States with his parents when he was just a few weeks old. He was raised in the Hindu religion at home, but educated at a Catholic school. The mixture of both these religions would have a profound effect on him, not just with his most recent offering (Devil), but also his first, Praying with Anger (1992) in which an American teenager tries to reconnect with his Indian heritage. Being of Indian descent myself and also having attending Catholic schools, the dualism of both these cultures and religions was something which made my outlook on life a little different my peers and as result, singled me out. I wondered if it was the same for Night.

PATRICK: Did you find it hard to fit in? Was your religion questioned or accepted?

NIGHT: At that age when I went from kindergarten through to 8th grade in Catholic school we didn’t have a lot of serious, religious teenagers in the school to begin with. It’s not like they were in a cult and I wasn’t in it! Everybody had a similar child-like approach to religion in general. The doctrine that was being taught, I approached it more as a subject than anything else, as Science, or History or anything like that, what are the rules, what are the characters – and I’ll get it right on the test! So it was more like that than anything else for me (laughs)!

But I think it affected me later on in that I was getting such different cultural values laid in different ways from two different cultures at the same time. I could internalise what was common between them and disregard what was not common because it would be invalid to the other culture. It gave me a kind of a perspective on both religions, Hinduism and Catholicism and that made me think a lot about spirituality in general. So I think if I had gone to a public school or if my parents hadn’t been religious then maybe those questions wouldn’t constantly emerge in what I sit down to write.

Despite my own mixed upbringing, I found I would later on abandon the doctrines and opt for a belief system based on my own blend of spirituality and existentialism. Although Night’s films have strong spiritual elements, I was interested to find out which one he ended leaning more towards as he got older.

NIGHT: If I had to pick one thing, I would probably be called a Daoist because of how I think, but I’ve certainly been exposed to a lot of religions and its provocative for me how something that was taught about this is the way your soul works and this is what happens when you die affects how you are as a culture and how you behave and what you think is correct behaviour and wrong behaviour and how it directly affects happiness. That really obsesses me. I think about it a lot and my wife is probably sick of me talking about anything related to this world at this point! But it is interesting for me and it finds its way into the storytelling, even in the lightest of ways. This umbilical cord between the stories we’ve been told as religion and how we perceive ourselves and the world around us and how easy it is to be happy or unhappy based on that story we were told. My uncles and aunts were all raised on the Hindu religion and all my friends were raised in the Catholic religion and that affected me a lot in how I think of the world. Each moment is an amazing moment and in there is all the lessons you can learn, good and bad, about yourself. The life journey is all about learning what makes you tick as a being, as a soul and trying to get in rhythm with that which is a very difficult thing.

Devil, unlike his previous films, is not directed by Night, it’s by Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle, the duo behind Quarantine (2008).

PATIRCK: It must have been interesting to see someone else bring one of your stories to life.

NIGHT: You’ll see someone else’s take. When you walk away from the movie you’ll definitely know it was one of my stories that I came up with and the tonalities are there for sure. But it’s very interesting to watch it executed by somebody else’s sensibilities. I had a great time watching somebody else interpret it.

As the first film in the Night Chronicles, Night intends for the series to continue and subsequent films to be produced by his company Blinding Edge Pictures

NIGHT: Yeah, it’s the first. I hope to make a bunch of them. Ideas I didn’t get to direct for whatever reason and I can get amazingly talented filmmakers to come in and interpret them, that would be my dream if we could continue to do this. We’re definitely making three of them and this is the first idea of the three.

PATRICK: It draws on basic and primal fears such as being trapped in a closed space and nature of evil, doesn’t it?

NIGHT: Yeah, I’m always in an elevator going “I wonder who these people are!” The funny thing is, I have plenty of fears, but being in an elevator is not one of them! But I think if I got into a tight, tight space I’d get a little claustrophobic.

I have a slight uneasiness toward glass elevators, but not so much that I would call it one of my greatest fears. That title is reserved for reptiles of a snaky nature. I do however get the idea of taking responsibility for one’s own actions and reflecting at the end of the day on whether or not I’ve been the best that I can be.

Devil, as a film which deal with this idea of people going through life without that responsibility and ending up in a situation where they are finally forced to face that will be interesting to experience, not just because it’s a film by Night but because there’s so much in the world we need to share the burden of responsibility for before its too late, either in our daily lives or globally.

Source: http://www.staticmass.net

Devil is now playing in theatres.

Box Office: Devil is over $40M level

Rohan — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 02:55:33 +0000

Directed by John Erick Dowdle from a screenplay by Brian Nelson and a story by M.Night Shyamalan, DEVIL is a story of five strangers trapped in a elevator realize that the devil is among them. The film is currently playing in theatres.

According to Box Office Mojo, DEVIL has reached over $40M worldwide. It has earned so far over $30M in domestic box office and $11M in overseas. The opening weekend the film earned over $12M in domestic box office and earned back its production budget right away. Devil opens in France and Finland on October 27th, 2010. Check back soon for future box office information on the film.

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