The first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Old has just been released. A brief teaser was released earlier this week, which did not really show off a whole lot. It did, however, raise a lot of hype for the full-length trailer. The director captioned the mysterious first footage with the number 5, counting down the days until Super Bowl Sunday, where we can see the whole thing and try to figure out what exactly is going on. Like any good trailer, the first footage from Old leaves a lot more questions than answers.
Back in 2019, it was announced that M. Night Shyamalan had signed a new contract with Universal Studios. Old is the first of his new projects with the studio, which he has also written and produced. The movie is inspired by the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters and it stars Gael Garc&ía Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Embeth Davidtz, and Rufus Sewell. As of this writing, Old is scheduled to be released on July 23rd, 2021.
Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters’ acclaimed graphic novel Sandcastle centers on a group of people who find they are unable to escape a mysterious, secluded beach as a dark secret surrounding time keeps them there after discovering a dead body. M. Night Shyamalan reportedly received the graphic novel as a gift and fell in love with the story, which he quickly purchased the rights to. As for what the Academy Award winning director has done with the source material, that is unclear, but fans of Shyamalan and Sandcastle are definitely going to want to see the results, especially after seeing the trailer. You can read the official synopsis below.
“Early morning on a perfect summer’s day, people begin to descend on an idyllic, secluded beach. Among their number, a family, a young couple, a refugee and some American tourists. Its fine white sand is fringed with rock pools filled with crystal clear water. The beach is sheltered from prying eyes by green-fringed cliffs that soar around the cove. But this utopia keeps a dark secret. A woman’s body is found floating in the waters, which brings these thirteen strangers together to try and unravel the riddle of the sands and escape the beach alive in this tense, fantastical mystery.”
It is believed that M. Night Shyamalan only used the Sandcastle story as a jumping off point, instead of a true big screen adaptation of the source material. The basic story is still intact, but the director has decided to do his own thing, which will obviously leave viewers trying to figure out what is happening throughout the entire movie. The first footage is intriguing and it will certainly have a lot of people trying to figure out the mystery.
Old started production in September 2020 and principal photography wrapped in November. The movie was originally supposed to open in theaters this month, but that was pushed back due to the public health crisis, which is still effecting production all over the world today. M. Night Shyamalan produced the movie with Ashwin Rajan through their Blinding Edge Pictures banner along with Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider, who is serving as executive producer. You can check out the first trailer for Old above, thanks to the |YouTube channel.