Spoilers for Old follow. If you haven’t watched the movie, look away now!
At first glance, Old may not seem like a prime candidate for a sequel. M. Night Shyamalan’s beach thriller, after all, wraps up in a satisfying manner. Maddox and Trent escape the cove and shut down operations of the WarnerWarner group after discovering their cruel experiments in the name of the ‘greater good.’ Fin? Not quite.
As with all good mysteries, there is a little more to be poked and prodded at. Namely, the histories of other trial subjects, the origins of the beach’s peculiar aging effect, and the shadowy intentions of WarnerWarner. It’s a lived-in world and one that could readily be explored in a whole host of ways.
Director M. Night Shyamalan, though, tells GamesRadar+ that he’s ready to move on – even if he does have an idea for a sequel.
"You know me, I'm the opposite of franchise. The excitement is to do something original," he says. But, fittingly, there’s a twist: "However, I did think of another idea."
"I said to the guy at my work, 'I just thought of another thing' [but] we're never going to do that. Let's just move on to the other movies."
Shyamalan, who can count only Split and Glass among his return efforts, is keen to head to pastures new and hasn’t revealed what the kernel of an idea for an Old sequel would be.
"Part of it is, ironically, not wanting to stay the same person that I was two years ago. I don't need to keep celebrating that for commercial ends," he explains.
"Even when I went back to make Split and Glass, I definitely did not want to go back to my 29-year-old self and try to recreate that point of view. It's disconcerting – I'm pretending to be something that I'm not. By the time it takes to finish a movie – it takes almost two years – I'm a completely different person. I'm ready to tell a different type of story."
For more from M. Night Shyamalan, be sure to check out our full interview with the director – including why the filmmaker wants to continually reinvent himself.
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