Jake Gyllenhaal Slated to Appear in New Movie From M. Night Shyamalan (and Nicholas Sparks)

Jake Gyllenhaal Set to Star in New Romantic Thriller

Jake Gyllenhaal has been positioned to appear in an upcoming film project from “collaborators” M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks.

Nicholas Sparks is writing a book while M. Night Shyamalan is writing a screenplay based on the same unique idea. That idea will formulate the basis for the new film project that Jake Gyllenhaal has just come on board. Sparks will be serving as Executive Producer on the picture that will be based on the same concept as the book he will be penning. This is a very different method of bringing a story to the page and to the screen, simultaneously, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Gyllenhaal was an action hero earlier this year in Amazon/MGM’s smash hit, Road House, which, it has been reported, is going to be soon getting a sequel. This Oscar-nominated star of 2005’s Brokeback Mountain also recently appeared in the reworking of Presumed Innocent for Apple TV Plus. This new Shyamalan/Sparks film project offers the versatile Gyllenhaal the opportunity to pair with two creative geniuses who have peaked in terms of the way they excel at their craft numerous times in the past.

M. Night Shyamalan, the principal creative force behind 1999’s blockbuster, The Sixth Sense, recently made a film with an ingenious plot called Trap which did moderately well at the box-office. In 1999, the Sparks box-office hit, Message in a Bottle starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright, opened. It was in 2004, though, that the film adaptation of Sparks’s The Notebook made wonderful financial returns and solidified Sparks as a creative force to contend with.

Though Gyllenhaal already has a diverse resume of many different character roles, this project from Shyamalan affords Gyllenhaal the opportunity to make something that he hasn’t really excelled in before — a romantic thriller. He’s done romance with Love & Other Drugs and he’s done a thriller with The Guilty but this is a chance for the merging of these two genres to propel the actor to uncharted territory.

This is a genuinely different way of creating a project. Writing a book and a movie at the same time with two different writers behind the concept is sure to reap intriguing results all around. There is still the pivotal casting to be done in regard to the other romantic lead for the picture who will play opposite the acclaimed Gyllenhaal. That true blue movie star, Gyllenhaal, is said to be pairing with Denzel Washington soon on Broadway for a re-telling of Othello. There’s almost nothing this master thespian can’t do. At least that’s what it seems like these days. Action hero, heartthrob, accomplished actor. Gyllenhaal is certainly all those things rolled into one.

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