Old 2 Happening? M. Night Shyamalan Answers
Could we get Old 2 from M. Night Shyamalan? The director rang in on a possible idea he has for a sequel and what that would look like
Are we going to return to the island of rapid aging for another family vacation from geriatric hell? M. Night Shyamalan sure seems like he would be into it based on some recent comments he made during an interview with GamesRadar (via CinemaBlend). They were asking him about the prospects of getting an Old 2 and he definitely expressed some positivity around the idea. Not necessarily a guy known to do sequels for his original movies (until recently), this time could be one of the exceptions.
In the interview, M. Night Shyamalan expressed that while he wasn’t one to necessarily default to going the franchise route with his films, this would be a time where he would consider it. Here is what he had to say about Old 2 and whether we could expect to see the sequel at some point in the future.
You know me, I’m the opposite of franchise. The excitement is to do something original. 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.’
Like many M. Night Shyamalan movies, in Old there is much more going on than meets the eye. In this flick, a family of travelers heads to an idyllic beach only to turn out that this particular location rapidly ages everyone there. It is, at times, a tough watch because of the off-putting nature of watching the kids specifically age on a sped-up timeline. In this way, Shyamalan doesn’t hold back all that much. But like most M. Night movies, we do get a twist at the end and this is something that Old 2 could definitely explore.
Additionally, an Old 2 wouldn’t necessarily need to deal with the same characters as the first. Considering where the story ended up leaving off, there is enough else happening in the larger Old world to warrant a couple of different kinds of stories. Again, like other M. Night movies like say The Village or even Lady Under the Water, significant portions of the overall narrative are left out in favor of keeping the viewer guessing the whole time. Most times, those don’t warrant a revisit, but this movie could be the exception.
Another reason to possibly head down the Old 2 path is that the first movie performed well enough at the box office to believe there is an appetite for more stories in this world. While only seeing a middling response from critics with the Rotten Tomatoes score sitting at exactly 50%, the box office numbers did tell a slightly different story. On its $18 million budget, it managed to make over $85 million at theaters. It came out in the middle of July when theaters were reopening to full capacity, so it had that going for it. But M. Night Shyamalan is still a draw here.
And while M. Night Shyamalan has said that he is the “opposite of franchise” his two previous movies Split and Glass were seemingly part of just that, successors and sequel to 2000s Unbreakable. So he is clearly not averse to continuing stories in the same universe. Such could be the case with Old 2. While his quote isn’t a confirmation that it is happening, there are clearly some ideas swimming around in that brain of his. We will have to take a wait-and-see approach with this one. M. Night Shyamalan movies tend to come out of nowhere when they finally come around.
