M. Night Shyamalan’s Upcoming TV Series Is the Toy Adaptation You Never Saw Coming

Apparently we don’t need to “ask again later” about a potential project based on the truth-telling children’s toy, the Magic 8 Ball, because M. Night Shyamalan is directing an upcoming Magic 8 Ball TV show.

In an Instagram post, Shyamalan, whose other major TV project, Apple’s “Servant,” wrapped in 2023, posted a photo of the titular toy above a script for a Magic 8 Ball TV pilot directed by him and written by Brad Falchuk. For the uninitiated, Falchuk is best known as a frequent collaborator of Ryan Murphy who has worked on shows like “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” “Pose” and “Scream Queens.”

“I’ve been working on this for a few years… Who’s up for it?” Shyamalan asked in his post with the hashtags “#ItsCertain” and “Magic8Ball.” Now I know what you’re thinking, especially if you watched the Emmy-winning comedy “The Studio” this year: Isn’t that a creative failure, even by Hollywood standards? On the one hand, that’s the case even though a Magic 8 Ball movie was released in 2019 under the Blumhouse Productions umbrella (there’s been no further news on that as of this writing) and even though Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie became an unexpected critical darling despite being based on a toy. On the other hand, the idea of ​​a Magic 8 Ball TV show is profoundly and completely idiotic, and for that exact reasonI think my Philly colleague Shyamalan is the perfect person to lead it.

If you need proof that a Magic 8 Ball TV series could actually be fun if it were directed by someone as smart as M. Night Shyamalan, look no further than “Trap,” the writer-director’s 2024 film that essentially asked, “What if ‘Silence of the Lambs’ took place during Taylor Swift’s Eras tour?” (This is not an assumption on my part; Shyamalan said it was his concept for the film, which rocks.) There’s no doubt that “Trap” is Shyamalan’s funniest film to date. Although the author has certainly displayed a dark sense of humor throughout his work, “Trap” is often overtly hilarious, not least because Josh Hartnett is SO incredibly good as the film’s central character (and main villain) Cooper Abbott.

Under Shyamalan’s careful direction, Hartnett brings Cooper, a firefighter and father who also that’s how it happens being a Philadelphia-area serial killer nicknamed “the Butcher,” fully — and because we learn so early in the film that Cooper and the Butcher are one and the same, the audience can tag along with him as he tries to evade the authorities and simultaneously guides his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) around a concert hosted by pop star Lady Raven. (The pop star is, amusingly, played by Saleka Night, Shyamalan’s daughter.) Calling Cooper sneaky is an understatement, and Shyamalan definitely has a lean Hartnett. until the end to its strangeness, giving the film a deliciously heightened feeling that is both hysterically funny And incredibly disturbing. Shyamalan is a one-of-a-kind director who concocts films like “Trap,” so forgive me for saying that I’m strangely excited to see where he’s going to take this Magic 8 Ball project.

Again, if, like me and so many other people, you watched and enjoyed “The Studio,” which features a whole story about a horrible-sounding Kool-Aid movie, it all seems a little weird and even disturbing. Is Hollywood just that? Instead of just rebooting things by typing “young” in front of a character name like “Young Sheldon,” are executives just digging through the boxes of their old toys and greenlighting movies and TV shows based on what they see? To a certain extent, yes, they are do that, especially after the truly wild and rather wonderful success of 2023’s “Barbie.” People had their doubts, but after Greta Gerwig produced a heartfelt show focused on Barbie’s (Margot Robbie) journey to self-realization and Ken’s (Ryan Gosling) ill-conceived flirtation with the patriarchy, “Barbie” earned well over a billion dollars. And earned a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Toy movies can work if an interesting director is behind them, apparently. (The A24 film “Barney” with Daniel Kaluuya on its creative team also comes to mind here – fingers crossed for that one.)

I am divided on this subject. On the one hand, if we use the fictional movie Kool-Aid as an example, it all seems strange and bad. But I’m going to dust off my optimist hat for just a second though. On the other On the other hand, these presumably gruesome concepts are handed over to directors who take big risks and refuse to play it safe; say what you want about M. Night Shyamalan, but this guy has Never played it safe, for better (“Unbreakable”) and for worse (“The Happening”). Maybe this Magic 8 Ball series will be terrible. Maybe it will be a fun diversion. We can expect at least one thing, though: another big change from Shyamalan’s deliciously twisted mind.