Nicholas Sparks on Collaborating With M. Night Shyamalan for a Supernatural Romance With Scares and a Twist

Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan are more similar than you think. And though joining forces for a novel may seem like a unique choice, the pair’s paths have crossed before.

“Long time ago, when we had the original script of The Notebook that was written by Jan Sardi, the studio and I decided, ‘Hey, we’re going to get another writer, and we’re going to start from scratch. He’s going to revise it to the way we want it.’ One of the writers we went to was a young, largely unknown screenwriter. His name was M. Night Shyamalan,” Sparks told The Hollywood Reporter.

Though the now supernatural aficionado was approached to help write the script for The Notebook, Sparks says he passed because he was “getting ready to do other things like The Sixth Sense. You’ve got to give him his pass. It all worked out for him!