The Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan has signed on to make thriller The Happening in his hometown of Philadelphia. The project will be the first movie he has made since his public falling out with film studio Disney over box-office flop Lady in the Water. Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox has given the new film the green light. The Happening centers around a family "running from a natural crisis that presents a large-scale threat to mankind." The movie, which Shyamalan also wrote, will be his first R-rated film. He explains, "(We're) trying to get the kind of intensity that is present in Silence of the Lambs and the kind that Guillermo Del Toro got in Pan's Labyrinth.
"The impact of the beautiful things in that movie wouldn't have landed as strongly if the film had not been R-rated." The movie begins shooting in Philadelphia in August and is set for a June 2008 release.