During a recent interview, M. Night Shyamalan revealed he would like to return to his roots and work on Unbreakable once again. He discussed the idea of creating a TV series for Netflix or HBO.
He was asked if TV would be a good place to revisit Unbreakable, in light of all the superhero and comic shows making their rounds.
“As a way continue the story, yes. That would [interest me]. I really love where we are. Could you do a six-episode Unbreakable series on Netflix or HBO? Yeah! That’s cool. I even had an idea of doing a story that goes in one form, and a second part that’s in another form, and a third one’s in a different form. You never do the same form. It would be like, movie, then, let’s say, cable, to TV, whatever, and then a play; it goes straight online, and it finishes like that.”
Now, it’s not difficult to look at that quote and see that he’s just spitballing. There’s no guarantee he’ll actually do this, let alone bother with getting everyone back together for a series — Bruce Willis included.
The goods news is that TV isn’t out of his realm anymore, especially since he’s behind Wayward Pines.
The more interesting question is, what would a TV series even be about?
I’m just going to slip in the necessary spoiler warning here if you never watched Unbreakable.
What Would Happen with an Unbreakable Series?
Obviously, I can’t predict everything that Shyamalan would do with a TV series. That said, I can look at how the movie ended and make a few guesses.
At the end of the movie, we see the culmination of everything that happened in the story. David finally confronts Elijah and realizes everything terrible he’s done up until that point, simply in the interest of finding him. Elijah has a remarkably unhealthy fascination with comic book superheroes.
We’re also told that Elijah is ‘Mr. Glass’ or David’s arch-villain.
Once the movie fades to black, captions reveal that David turned Elijah over to the police and that he was convicted of murder and terrorism — for all the disasters he caused. Elijah is put into an institution for the criminally insane a la Arkham or Ravencroft.
Just when the movie was getting awesome, it was all over.
My guess is that a TV series would reveal some of the other terrible things that Mr. Glass has done over the years to find his superhero. It’s possible the disasters he caused could have created other heroes or villains. Hell, maybe Glass would even break out of the institution to wreak more havoc.
What I admire most about Unbreakable is the gritty realism that we don’t see often in other superhero and comic tales. The enemies in the movie are nothing more than normal humans, committing heinous acts. It’s a closer parallel to the real world, in which we — humanity — are the real danger.
What do you think?
