When Unbreakable hit the big screen in 2000, it was way ahead of its time – a stealth superhero movie before the genre became ubiquitous, with a subtle, grounded and compelling take on super powers. And while that film’s stature has grown over time after disappointing critically and commercially, most of us never imagined that it would eventually get a sequel – let alone a trilogy that itself was ignited up in a typically M. Night Shyamalan ending twist. In its closing minutes, 2016’s Split was revealed as a pseudo-sequel to Unbreakable, and now Glass is here to bring the universe together – with Bruce Willis’ David Dunn, Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass and James McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb all sharing the screen. Empire has an exclusive image of Willis and Shyamalan back on set together, as seen in the Ultimate 2019 Preview issue, with Willis returning to the role he originated nearly 20 years ago.
While the idea of the Split-iverse’s powered-up trio knocking seven bells out of each other might be where other superhero movies would take the concept, Shyamalan has a more intriguing trajectory for the film – a horror-inflected psychodrama, with the trio being studied by Sarah Paulson’s psychiatrist Dr Ellie Staple. “What if I did a comic-book version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?” the writer-director explains to Empire of his approach to Glass. “How cool would that be? How weird and cool?”
Read more about Glass and its long road to the cinema screen in the February 2019 issue of Empire, hitting newsstands on Thursday 27 December. The film arrives in UK cinemas on 18 January.
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