M Night Shyamalan says next movie will be a ‘cool kind of flip on a genre’

M. Night Shyamalan has teased his next film will be a “cool kind of flip on a genre”.

The 53-year-old director recently released his thriller ‘Trap’ - which sees a serial killer called Cooper A.K.A. The Butcher (Josh Hartnett) come to realise the pop concert he took his daughter (Ariel Donoghue) to was an FBI plot to catch him - and has revealed he is already working on a new project that will have a unique take on a popular film genre.

He told Collider: “I'm still learning about it. It has a really cool kind of flip on a genre, so I'm very excited about that. I haven't done this particular subject matter, and I've always been interested in it. But it's an odd way to come into it again.

“I'm really interested now, like with ‘Trap’ , kind of going at subject matters, like serial killers, but doing it from an angle that you haven't seen before.”

The filmmaker reflected on the process of falling in love with an idea for a movie, and added he knows the concept is a winner when he needs to discover how the story concludes before he’s penned it.

He explained: “I think it's irrational. There's a love thing. For example, the closest thing I can think of is when we put the trailer out for a ‘Trap’, it was such an incredible reaction to the trailer—the biggest of my career.

“That feeling that they had about the premise and watching those images, I have two years earlier when I'm just imagining it, and I'm like, ‘Oh, a concert and they set a trap for a serial killer, but you're with the serial killer. This could be so fun! The kids are screaming and he's trying to get out, and it's really inappropriate. They're being silly and he's trying to be a dad.’

“I was like, ‘Whoa, that's fun!’ So in a way, the way you react to the premise, two years earlier, I get excited and I wanna know how that ends.”

The director added it was “fun” to try to find the balance of getting the audience to root for The Butcher to escape the FBI, while reminding them the serial killer also acts as the picture’s antagonist.

He explained: “That was the fun part, both of the creating and then to put [the audience members] in the shoes of him and kind of, against your will, root for him. He's both the protagonist and the antagonist. It's fun to flip.

“Then, the structure of the movie at some point shifts to him as the antagonist, and so you're frightened. That's a beautiful thing of structure which I enjoyed writing, and Josh enjoyed performing. You're with him, with him, with him, and then you're frightened.”