M. Night Shyamalan has not been known for his adaptations of other writer’s work, but it seems that after much speculation Knock at the Cabin is actually based on a much-loved horror novel by Paul Tremblay. According to Tremblay himself, the new chiller from the director of Old and The Sixth Sense is adapted from the novel The Cabin at the End of the World, and while it will obviously feature some changes and the usual host of Shyamalan surprises, this is one of the directors’ unusual forays into working with someone else’s original storyline.
In an interview with CNBC, Tremblay finally explained how Shyamalan came to become director on the movie, and how he has been keeping the connection between the movie and the book a secret for some time. Tremblay said:
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He added that Shyamalan was originally on board as a producer for the movie, which went into development in 2017, but when the first director dropped out the filmmaker was quick to step up to take over. He added:
“I honestly spent a chunk of my 2022 spring quelling internet rumors and putting out Twitter fires connecting the book and movie. It reached a point in early June where that became impossible, however, with all the information out there, including the IMDb page. I have been doing my part to be respectful of movie marketing desires and certainly wouldn’t dream of spoiling anything. Like the majority of adaptations, there will be story changes and differences compared to the book so my readers will still be surprised by the film.”
“Of course, it was thrilling to hear that he was interested as I’ve enjoyed a number of his movies. At the time, though, given my prior experience with the ups and downs and the waiting game of development, I’d heard lots of exciting names attached to or interested in my prior novels and then things inevitably would fall apart. When it became clear that not only was Night interested and attached, that the movie was in fact going into preproduction and then production, I then moved from cautious optimism to real-time excited.”
Knock At The Cabin Wrapped Filming Last Month
Knock at the Cabin has followed very quickly in the wake of Old, the sci-fi movie released by Shyamalan in 2021. The writer/director previously mentioned that the screenplay for this movie is one of the fastest he has ever written, which could have been helped by having source material to work from.
The film has an ensemble cast of Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Ben Aldridge, Jonathan Groff, and Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Shyamalan recently explained why he immediately wanted Guardians of the Galaxy and Dune star Bautista in the lead role, which essentially came down to one scene in Blade Runner 2049. He said:
“I was really taken by what Denis [Villeneuve] and Dave [Bautista] did in that scene in Blade Runner [2049]. He was still in a way that was powerful. There’s a type of stillness where you’re not doing nothing; you’re doing everything and you’re still. Every cell in your body will do what it’s supposed to do if you’re thinking something correctly. And Dave was embodying all of this philosophy in that scene … I didn’t know who he was at that time, and he stuck in my head. So when this script came, I was like, ‘There seems to be one guy who can play this giant human being and do the stillness.’ So I asked Dave.”
