Remain signals a new Hollywood strategy and M. Night Shyamalan’s YouTube debut proves it

A month after M. Night Shyamalan's YouTube debut, Warner Bros. has unveiled the official teaser for Remain, the horror master's upcoming supernatural romantic thriller, based on an idea developed with author Nicholas Sparks.

The timing of the upcoming Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor-starring thriller is interesting and signals a new Hollywood strategy. While YouTube horror creators (like Kane Parsons and Curry Barker) are pivoting to feature filmmaking, M. Night Shyamalan, the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who has spent three decades developing horror hits with twist endings, has debuted on their turf.

Shyamalan's YouTube debut came a month before the recently released Remain teaser, which hints that Hollywood is finally catching up to the wave of YouTube filmmakers and is ready to tap into the platform's potential.

M. Night Shyamalan's YouTube debut coincides with the Remain teaser

This year, Hollywood noticed a major shift in the horror genre. The breakout success of Parsons' sci-fi psychological horror film Backrooms and Barker's supernatural horror film Obsession hinted at a pivot away from traditional studio horror franchises. Unlike most big-budget horror projects, Backrooms and Obsession grew out of an internet creepypasta lore about an endless labyrinth of monochromatic yellow office rooms and viral indie shorts created by Barker, respectively. However, their record-breaking theatrical success hinted that Hollywood is ready for a big change.

M. Night Shyamalan and Warner Bros. seem to have embraced this change wholeheartedly with the release of Remain. A month before the studio dropped the teaser for its upcoming supernatural thriller, The Sixth Sense director debuted on YouTube. What's interesting is that Shyamalan is using the platform as a personal journal and breaking down the history of his movies. After his first video, titled 'This is my first YouTube video,' the latest 16-minute video shares details from a journal he kept while making the 2002 sci-fi thriller Signs.

M. Night Shyamalan's candid and personal storytelling style is on full display on his YouTube channel, which is bound to pull in his audience and seasoned horror genre fans.

A still from the teaser (Image via YouTube/M. Night Shyamalan)

Interestingly, Warner Bros. collaborated with Shyamalan on the Remain teaser, suggesting that the studio is eyeing his audience and using his social media presence to build an audience for its upcoming movie. With this latest strategy, Hollywood is finally getting on the YouTube bandwagon and starting to understand that an authentic social media presence is bound to attract a larger audience into theatres.

With small YouTube projects finding their way to theatrical adaptations, renowned filmmakers are now moving onto the platform. This reversal is sure to benefit people with more experimental and authentic movies.

M. Night Shyamalan and Sparks' upcoming thriller Remain follows New York architect Tate Gordon (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he heads to Cape Cod to design a summer house for his best friend. This move is meant to be a fresh start in Tate's life, as he is mourning the death of his sister and is being treated for acute depression. However, his carefully ordered world is disrupted with the arrival of a young but mysterious woman, Wren (Phoebe Dynevor).

The Remain teaser is already creating waves on social media and fans are hailing it as the perfect horror date-night movie, thanks to the team-up between Sparks and Shyamalan. In addition to Gyllenhaal and Dynevor, the film stars Maria Dizzia, Ashley Walters, Julie Hagerty, Jay O. Sanders, Tracy Ifeachor and Hannah James.