WATCH: M. Night Shyamalan Promotes New Movie With Horror Short featuring 76ers James Harden And Doc Rivers
M. Night Shyamalan has a new film on the way called Knock At The Cabin and he's promoting it with a quick prompt featuring some familiar faces from his favorite NBA team the Philadelphia 76ers.
And yes, in typical M. Night fashion, there is indeed a twist.
The promo starts with M. Night and Sixers point guard James Harden kicking it in a cabin that looks — for obvious reasons — like the one from his upcoming movie.
They play some chess, have a few adult beverages (note the product placement for J Harden wines; I'm guessing that was part of the deal), and M. Night make a shoe-horned basketball analogy.
But then... there's a knock at the cabin... like the title of the movie...
"I wouldn't answer that if I were you," M. Night warns.
But then the big twist: the knock didn't come from a group of cultists wanting to perform a sacrifice to ward off the end of the world like in Shyamalan's flick; it's just Doc Rivers.
Not quite a twist on par with the trees making everyone kill themselves (spoiler alert) or the 19th-century village is actually in today times (spoiler alert again), but not terrible considering Shyamalan only had about 20 seconds to set up the pins before Doc Rivers came and kicked them over.
M. Night Shyamalan Found A Cool Way To Promote His New Flick
Overall, it's a creative way to promote the movie, and if you're M. Night Shyamalan it gives you a chance to hang with some dudes from your favorite team.
I'm a big fan of people who get so successful they can do stuff just because they want to go somewhere or hang out with someone. Like how Adam Sandler just picks a place he wants to vacation and then builds a movie around that. Why else do you think he has like four movies that take place in Hawaii?
If I had made a very successful movie in which it's revealed that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time (spoiler alert), I would be doing this exact thing. I'd make a period film about the Civil War but then I'd promote it with a video of me and the dudes from Iron Maiden wearing soldier hats and trying to load muskets.
Why? Because I wanted to hangout with the dudes from Iron Maiden and had an excuse to do so.
I'm not sure how this will convince anyone to go to a movie theater — which are still in operation believe it or not — and see this. But it was a damn good way to get it some heat before its February 3 release date.
Follow on Twitter: @Matt_Reigle