There was an alchemy...

Film's master of twist - M Night Shyamalan - has teamed up with literature's maestro of romance – Nicholas Sparks – for a new project that comprises a book and a movie adaptation. Louis Chilton talks to them about collaboration with a twist

- Louis Chilton

It almost has the cadence of a joke: What do you get when you cross Nicholas Sparks and M Night Shyamalan? A love story with a twist.

There is, however, nothing remotely facetious about Remain, an out-of-the-blue, did-I-hear-that-correctly project that pairs Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense and master of the cinematic rug-pull, with Sparks, the bestselling author known for tear-jerking romance novels such as The Notebook.

Working from Shyamalan’s initial story idea - a love story with elements of mystery and the supernatural - Sparks has written Remain as a novel, while Shyamalan has concurrently directed it as a feature film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor. “Someone was asking us, ‘Do you think this will be the future of how people collaborate?’ I was like, ‘No. I don’t think it’ll ever happen again,’” laughs the filmmaker.

I’m speaking to both men over video call, a few days before the novel is published. (The film is already shot, but won’t be out for another year; after our interview, Shyamalan will beeline back to the editing room.) Both the film and novel tell the same story - about a man, grieving the death of his sister, who moves to Cape Cod and encounters a mysterious stranger. There are significant differences in the two tellings; Sparks describes the book and film as “identical twins raised by separate people”. Sitting chummily next to each other in an office in midtown Manhattan, though, Sparks, 59, and Shyamalan, 55, seem like consummate co-parents.

There’s scant romance in the origins of