On the surface, author Nicholas Sparks and filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan seem like unlikely collaborators. Sparks is a master of the \u201cearthbound\u201d love story like \u201cThe Notebook,\u201d while Shyamalan, the Oscar-nominated director of \u201cThe Sixth Sense,\u201d is known for his fascination with the supernatural. It turns out they\u2019ve admired each other\u2019s work for years, and now together have produced \u201cRemain,\u201d which arrives on bookshelves next week and lands in movie theaters next October.<\/p>\n
Sparks is known for pulling at readers\u2019 heartstrings with cinematic love stories \u2014 11 of which have made their way to the big screen, and several of which Sparks produced himself. But with \u201cRemain,\u201d the bestselling author has forged a singular partnership that takes him well outside his comfort zone. For one, the romance that transpires is between a living male and, let\u2019s say, a ghostly woman. The lovers have otherworldly sex, although they can\u2019t actually touch. In other words, it\u2019s a love story only this pair could concoct.<\/p>\n
In early 2023, Sparks says someone on his team approached him with an idea. \u201cHey,\u201d Sparks recounted, \u201cwouldn\u2019t it be neat if you did something with M. Night Shyamalan?\u201d Sparks, who The Times interviewed over Zoom from his home in New Bern, N.C., had been a Shyamalan devotee for decades. Of course, he loved \u201cThe Sixth Sense.\u201d \u201cWho didn\u2019t, right?\u201d he laughs. But he\u2019s also been a fan of every Shyamalan production since. There was even a near-miss between them decades ago. \u201cWhen \u2018The Notebook\u2019 was being adapted into a movie way back in the late 1990s, one of the filmmakers the producers approached was M. Night. He turned it down because he was working on another project.\u201d Sparks pauses, then smiles slyly, \u201cI think it was called \u2018The Sixth Sense.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At this stage of his highly successful career \u2014 more than 115 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide \u2014 Sparks can pick and choose among projects. And he\u2019s also now enough of a Hollywood veteran to know that getting from concept to screen can be challenging \u2014 though Sparks\u2019 track record is pretty remarkable. So while he was open to a partnership with Shyamalan, Sparks was skeptical it would get off the ground. To Sparks\u2019 surprise, a month or two after the idea was first floated, he received a call to arrange a meeting between the two the following month \u2014 in May 2023 \u2014 in Shyamalan\u2019s Bucks County, Pa., offices. They agreed that each would propose his own storyline and together they would decide which to go forward with. The competition was on.<\/p>\n
It became clear within moments that Shyamalan\u2019s concept would win the day, though Sparks is reticent to say why, except that \u201cmine was pretty dark.\u201d Once Shyamalan characterized his vision as a \u201csupernatural love story,\u201d Sparks thought, \u201cI can do that. It\u2019s not so wildly outside what I do. Something Lovecraftian with different dimensions.\u201d The more he thought about it, the more Sparks realized that, \u201cin the end, novels come down to character, writing and plotting.\u201d All of those were in his toolbox. They got what Sparks describes as \u201cthe fangirling stuff\u201d out of the way, and then took a hard look at how well they could work together. \u201cIt came down to chemistry,\u201d Sparks says.<\/p>\n
The pair spent the next several hours honing the central idea and spitballing about plot and character development. It was eventually decided that the male protagonist, Tate Donovan \u2014 to be played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie \u2014 would be an architect who is grieving the loss of his sister. She tells him on her deathbed that she\u2019s able to see spirits \u201cstill tethered to the living world.\u201d Both novel and film would be set in Cape Cod, Mass., and there would be a mysterious woman named Wren, which is where the supernatural element would come in. They loosely agreed on the outline, but no firm deal or timeline was put in place. Sparks returned to his home in New Bern. More than a year passed, during which, Sparks says, \u201cI didn\u2019t hear anything from him at all. I thought, \u2018OK, he\u2019s busy. I\u2019m busy. Whatever,\u2019\u201d and turned to another project.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
M. Night Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for the film \u201cRemain,\u201d starring Jake Gyllenhaal, as Nicholas Sparks wrote the book.<\/p>\n
(Gerald Matzka \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
In August 2024, Sparks was surprised to receive a call from Shyamalan, who had already moved forward on the idea. \u201cOur story is going to be my next project,\u201d Sparks recalls Shyamalan saying. \u201cHe told me he intended to write, direct and produce the film.\u201d Sparks says it then hit him, \u201cOh my gosh. This is going to be an M. Night movie!\u201d The mood shifted from excitement to reality: \u201cI guess I\u2019d better get started on the novel!\u201d Sparks recalls telling himself.<\/p>\n
After that call, it took only six weeks for Shyamalan to complete a first draft of the screenplay, which he sent to Sparks for comment. Typically, the book would be written first, and the screenplay would follow, though, for \u201cMessage in a Bottle,\u201d Sparks finished the novel after Gerald Di Pego had completed the script, with Kevin Costner attached. Sparks knew the drill. He immediately recognized, \u201cWow, this is going to make a great film,\u201d but to work as a novel, he told Shyamalan, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to tweak some things.\u201d By October, they\u2019d smoothed out the rough edges and Sparks began writing in earnest.<\/p>\n
Sparks\u2019 career is the stuff of fairy tales, much like the romances he writes. It was his mother who first suggested he write books to \u201cstop him from pouting\u201d after he was sidelined with an injury from the University of Notre Dame track and field team. The first-ever novel he wrote was \u201ctruly terrible,\u201d Sparks says, and has never been published. But the seed was planted. Many years later, after marrying, having kids and working as a pharmaceutical sales rep, he thought back to his mother\u2019s advice, and spent evenings writing a novel he named \u201cWinter for Two.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sent off the finished manuscript to 25 literary agents. Only one \u2014 Theresa Park \u2014 responded. She was enthusiastic, but urged him to retitle it \u201cThe Notebook.\u201d At Park\u2019s request, he printed 20 or so hard copies to be mailed to publishers. One of those landed in the hands of Jamie Raab, who was then executive editor at Warner Books in New York. Raab instantly saw its potential and rushed a copy to her boss\u2019 apartment, asking her to drop everything and read it as quickly as possible. Raab\u2019s boss was sold, and instructed her to \u201ctake the novel off the table\u201d in a preemptive deal that would prevent other publishers from bidding. \u201cI knew it had a lot of heart. It made me cry. \u2026 I had an instinct that many would feel the same way,\u201d Raab recalls. In 1996, \u201cThe Notebook\u201d hit No. 1 on bestseller lists; in 2004, it became a box office hit starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams; and in 2024, it was turned into a play that was nominated for three Tony Awards. Raab ended up editing 18 more of Sparks\u2019 books.<\/p>\n
Sparks says he and Shyamalan worked well as a team. \u201cHe gave me a very long leash to write a novel based on the story the two of us came up with,\u201d Sparks says. \u201cI would call him and say, \u2018Can I make the ending different?\u2019 or \u2018How about this twist instead?\u2019\u201d They spoke three or four times a week during this period. They had \u201ca wonderful time bouncing ideas off each other,\u201d Sparks says. \u201cThe only tricky part was that I couldn\u2019t make all the decisions about the novel on my own, as I normally would.\u201d He says, \u201cNight got to pick the rules and I had to write within those rules. His story determined what I needed to do, but it was still up to me to figure out how I was going to do it.\u201d Their teamwork, Sparks says, produced \u201ca great movie,\u201d hitting theaters Oct. 23, 2026, and a book he hopes readers will be surprised and delighted by.<\/p>\n
For anyone who\u2019s shocked that Sparks would stray off the beaten path of traditional love stories, that first book, the one his mom prompted him to write but never saw the light of day? It was a horror novel inspired by Sparks\u2019 literary hero, Stephen King. Who knows where Sparks may venture next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the Shelf Remain By Nicholas Sparks with M. Night ShyamalanRandom House: 352 pages, $30 If you buy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[422,36160,146,20981,85,46,46604,36399,46606,46605,1527,5782,5164,36396,46602,41687,46603,1661],"class_list":["post-63540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-book","tag-copy","tag-entertainment","tag-idea","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jamie-raab","tag-m-night-shyamalan","tag-new-bern","tag-nicholas-sparks","tag-notebook","tag-novel","tag-project","tag-shyamalan","tag-spark","tag-sparks","tag-supernatural-love-story","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}