Everyone is excited about seeing a potential career revival for M. Night Shyamalan with The Last Airbender partially because it's not his original screenplay, given him a chance to get away from the twists that at first made him cool, but late made him feel like a one-trick pony. But beware-- Shyamalan is not finished tinkering with the written word, and Chris Messina may be the next person to learn that the hard way.

He's set to star in Universal's Devil, a horror thriller that Brian Nelson wrote based on Shyamalan's story. In a big departure from his recent nice-guy roles in Julie & Julia and Away We Go, he's playing a homicide detective recently off the sauce. Variety reports that filming starts in Toronto on the 26th, with Quarantine directors John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle directing.

I never really wanted to give up on Shyamalan in the first place, so I'm actually totally interested to see how this plays out, especially with Messina doing such an atypical role give his career thus far. The man with a haunted past is a familiar character in Shyamalan's work, but maybe with enough people between the storyteller and the movie, this one might be a successful take on it.