THE Last Airbender is Shyamalan's ninth movie following Praying with Anger, Wide Awake, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water and The Happening.

The huge success of his chilling psychological thriller The Sixth Sense catapulted Shyamalan into the stratosphere of being one of the most sought after young filmmakers in Hollywood.

Shyamalan then had worldwide success with the supernatural thriller Signs starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.

He was in London recently on a publicity tour for The Last Airbender and What's On was granted an audience.

I asked him what attracted him to the movie, since it is essentially a departure for him in terms of style and content.

"There's so many things that drew me to this. There's the Hayao Miyazaki influence, which was huge for me and there's the martial arts. The two types of movies that were my guilty pleasures as a kid were horror movies and martial arts movies. So, I've got to do my version of scarier movies and I've been starting to think about martial arts again as an interesting art — something that you learn so you never have to use it."

The strong fan base that the TV show had was obviously a big commercial draw for both Shyamalan and Paramount but the fan boys have also been critical of his take on the movie.

He defended his vision: "What I wanted to do was just go right up front and say, 'These are the 10 things I changed and this is why'. Not that they were changed capriciously or that the studio had a gun to my head: it wasn't that at all. It was all for specific artistic reasons that are defendable and come from somebody who honours the subject matter; not from some kind of commercial or callous thing, or from people that don't care. It comes from caring... from a super, super amount of attention to the details."

The fans have driven the movie to box office success in the US so the possibility of a trilogy is being considered which Shyamalan feels should be darker: "As it evolves, I definitely want to get more operatic. We can be darker."

Only time will tell if we see another instalment, but until then he has another movie in development: "It's called Devil. It was such a great experience. I did it simultaneously with Airbender and it refreshed me. The Dowdle brothers who produced and directed it... you know, they're coming at it from a different point of view, from an edgier point of view. It reminds me and gets me excited about filmmaking again and they challenge you. Literally, I had the greatest time making that movie. When you see it it'll feel like one of my movies but with a slightly different language to it, which is exciting."

Let's hope so as Devil will be in cinemas this September.

Early screening reports of Devil have been very positive so hopefully we will see a return to form from the director who frightened the life out of me with Signs.