Nicholas Sparks’ Remain Is Becoming an M. Night Shyamalan Movie — Don’t Expect the Same Twist

File this under collaborations I did not expect: M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks made a supernatural romance together. Yes, really. It exists as both a book and a movie called 'Remain', built from the same shared premise but tailored to their separate mediums. The book is out now. The movie lands right before Halloween next year.

What 'Remain' actually is

Shyamalan and Sparks cooked up the core story together; then they went their separate ways. Shyamalan wrote a screenplay. Sparks turned the idea into a novel. Same concept, same characters, different executions.

The Sparks novel is on shelves now, and it leans into grief, ghostly possibilities, and messy human connection. The lead is Tate Donovan, a New York architect who heads to Cape Cod to design his best friend’s summer house and, hopefully, reset his life. He has just been discharged from a high-end psychiatric facility where he was treated for acute depression, still raw from losing his sister, Sylvia. On her deathbed, Sylvia told him she could see spirits tethered to the living — a so-called family gift — which Tate, a pragmatist, does not exactly buy.

Checking into a historic Cape bed-and-breakfast, Tate meets Wren. Instant spark. But beneath Wren’s postcard-perfect coastal life, uglier forces are gnawing away — jealousy, greed, the kind of small-town rot that does not stay buried. To help Wren, Tate has to dig into her past fast, which pushes him up against uncomfortable questions about the stories we tell ourselves and the rules we think reality runs on. It is a love story that wants to be cathartic and a little unnerving at the same time: can love actually break through grief — and maybe even the line between life and death?

The movie side

Warner Bros. will release Shyamalan’s film version of 'Remain' on October 23, 2026 — right in that pre-Halloween sweet spot. The cast is stacked: Jake Gyllenhaal ('Donnie Darko') and Phoebe Dynevor ('Bridgerton') lead, with Julie Hagerty ('Airplane'), Jay O. Sanders ('When You Finish Saving the World'), Tracy Ifeachor ('The Pitt'), Hannah James ('Mercy Street'), Caleb Ruminer ('The Irrational'), Kieran Mulcare ('Jessica Jones'), Maria Dizzia ('My Old Ass'), and award-winning actor, producer, director, and recording artist Ashley Walters ('Adolescence').

The twist about the twist

Here is the fun wrinkle. While doing book press, Sparks said the novel and the film may not share the same ending swing. In other words: do not assume the big turn you read is the one you will watch.

'The last page is a little bit of a wink to Night and his past work... One of the questions I asked Night was, do you want the ending to be the same? Do you want the twist to be the same? And we made a decision about that. You gotta read the book and see the movie.'

How these two even teamed up

There is a neat industry backstory here. Shyamalan and Sparks have known each other since New Line once asked Shyamalan to write 'The Notebook' screenplay. He turned it down because he was deep into 'The Sixth Sense.' For 'Remain', they traded two pitches that blended romance and the supernatural. Shyamalan’s pitch became this project. Sparks says they might circle back to his pitch — his words: 'a good love story, little scary' — somewhere down the road.

• Book: 'Remain' by Nicholas Sparks — available now
• Film: 'Remain' written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan — in theaters October 23, 2026 via Warner Bros. Pictures
• Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Phoebe Dynevor, Julie Hagerty, Jay O. Sanders, Tracy Ifeachor, Hannah James, Caleb Ruminer, Kieran Mulcare, Maria Dizzia, Ashley Walters

Bottom line: if you are curious how Shyamalan’s version of a Sparks story (and vice versa) plays, the experiment has officially begun. Read now, watch next year, compare notes later.