M. Night Shyamalan Calls Remain the Highest-Testing Movie of His Career, and It’s Unlike Anything He’s Made Before
M. Night Shyamalan built his career on one promise: something is wrong, and you won’t understand how wrong until the very end. His next film, Remain, keeps that promise but wraps it around something he’s never attempted before, a full-blown romance, co-created with bestselling novelist Nicholas Sparks. Since the first trailer landed on September 8, Shyamalan has made one claim hard to ignore, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s my highest-testing movie of my career.”
An Odd Couple: Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks
Remain started in 2023 as a shared idea between Shyamalan and Sparks, the author behind The Notebook and more than a dozen other romance bestsellers. Instead of splitting duties on one script, the two went their own ways with the same premise: Sparks turned it into a novel released in October 2025 that debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, credited to Sparks with Shyamalan, while Shyamalan wrote and directed his own screenplay version for the screen. Sparks also serves as an executive producer on the film.
Trust the Unknown
The film follows Tate Gordon (Jake Gyllenhaal), a New York architect recovering from depression and grief after his sister’s death, who travels to Cape Cod for a design project and ends up staying at a historic bed and breakfast. There he meets Wren (Phoebe Dynevor), a woman who pulls him out of his isolation, but whose true nature the film refuses to explain. Is Wren really there, or is she something Tate’s grieving mind has conjured? The trailer leans hard into that ambiguity, with Wren turning to Tate at one point to ask, “Why can’t we be together?”, while the official synopsis ties her fate to a deadly mystery hanging over the whole town.
Remain pairs Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor as a couple whose relationship may not be entirely of this world.
Who’s in Remain
- Tate Gordon: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Wren: Phoebe Dynevor
- Oscar: Ashley Walters
- Louise: Julie Hagerty
- Reece: Jay O. Sanders
- Also starring: Tracy Ifeachor, Hannah James, Caleb Ruminer, Kieran Mulcare, and Maria Dizzia
- Nash: M. Night Shyamalan, in a supporting role
When and Where You Can See It
Remain was shot on 35mm VistaVision cameras across Rhode Island, including Newport, Bristol, and Providence, during a June to August 2025 shoot, with additional reshoots in February 2026. James Newton Howard scores the film, his ninth collaboration with Shyamalan going back to The Sixth Sense. Warner Bros. Pictures had originally dated Remain for Halloween weekend, October 23, 2026, before pushing it back to February 5, 2027, in the U.S. (February 3 internationally). The studio’s own marketing brands it as a Valentine’s Day 2027 release, even though the confirmed date lands nine days before the holiday itself.
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Picture Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
