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Zooey Deschanel Cast in M. Night Shyamalan's Happening

by Alex Billington
May 30, 2007
Source: Variety

I don't know what happened to Bryce Dallas Howard, who was always M. Night Shyamalan's frontrunner, but I'm certainly pleased with his latest choice. In M. Night's upcoming thriller The Happening (which we've mentioned plenty before), Zooey Deschanel (from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) has just joined the cast alongside of Mark Wahlberg. As a quick recap, the film is about a man who takes his family on the run when an apocalyptical natural crisis threatens to end civilization, an eco-thriller as its being called. Sounds somewhat like a mix of War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow, but with an M. Night Shyamalan twist.

Wahlberg plays the father of the family, Elliot Moore, but no specifics on what character Zooey will play have been announced yet. It starts shooting this August in Philadelphia for a Friday the 13th,summer of 2008 release and a $57 million budget. The film is Shyamalan's first R-rated film, and with the poor performance of his last film, Lady in the Water, maybe this one will be different and a possible return to form. So far he's got great casting choices, as is always one of his strong points, now we're left to see if the story will hold up.

Explore tags: Movie News

DarthSauron

Howard was never considered for the part of Alma Moore - in a recent interview she said she found out about Shyamalan's next movie on the internet and that she didnt know anything more about it. Anyway, Shyamalan never uses the same actor more than twice, which leads me to believe that Paul Giamatti might be up for a supporting role in "The Happening".
Treidon

How did you know the characters name? Was the script leaked online? Shyamalan is usually pretty tight lipped about revealing script elements.
DarthSauron

The first draft of "The Green Effect" was leaked a couple of months ago. Just go on the IMDb message board for "The Happening" and see for yourself. Latino Review even posted a script summary on their site several months ago.
http://www.firstshowing.net Alex Billington

What Darth Sauron said. It's been out... almost all scripts are out somewhere, even the very tightly kept ones, if you really seek hard enough, can end up in your hands. But the name of someone should mean much, because I'm really looking forward to this anyway.
Treidon

Wow.. DarthSauron was right, that was way too easy to find. Time to go read it!