With The Village providing a needed box-office boost for Disney, plans for M. Night Shyamalan's next twist-ending fright fest are being put on the fast track. But how will his next film make the transition from genius idea to bone-chilling genius spooky horror masterpiecefest?

Only Fametracker can take you inside the recent pitch meeting, at which M. Night Shyamalan, the master of the twist-ending horror film with a twist, reveals the secrets of his next horrorific project. (We've changed the names of the executives present to protect their identities and also because no one would know them anyway.)

One thing's for sure: This tale isn't going to end the way you think it is! Unless you've seen his other films! Or a few episodes of The Twilight Zone!

WARNING: Contains real, honest-to-goodness The Village spoilers as well as fake, made-up spoilers!

1: All right everyone, quiet down. M. Night, can I get you a drink? Latte? Bottled water? C2 Cola -- it's half Diet Coke, half regular Coke.

M. Night Shyamalan: Water would be fine. And please, just call me Night.

1: [to assistant] Get Night a water! A C2 for me.

2: Me too!

3: Make it three. I love that it's half the calories and all the taste.

1: Well, let's not diddle around. I know we're all very eager to hear your concept, Night. We need some more of your magic!

3: Yeah! Lay it out for us! It's what-meets-what?

MNS: Please. I don't dabble in that kind of high-concept tripe.

2: Of course not!

1: [Executive #3], what were you thinking? Apologize!

3: I'm sorry.

1: Kiss the ring!

3: But I --

1: Kiss it!

MNS: Really. There's no need. [extends ringed finger]

[sound of lips on ring]

1: I'm sorry, Night. Now hit us. Blow us away. We're ready. Lay out your vision, Night.

2: Yeah! Show us your Night vision!

3: Our eyes are goggling in anticipation of your Night vision!

MNS: Gentleman, first I brought you The Sixth Sense.

1: Fantastic!

2: Stunning!

3: Groundbreaking!

MNS: Then I brought you Unbreakable.

1: Stupendous!

2: So moody!

3: Me, not so much.

MNS: Then I brought you Signs...and then The Village...

1: A twinpack of masterpieces!

2: A matched set of genius!

3: I was a little unclear on the spiny monsters. And why did they keep a costume under the floorboards? And why not just bring medicine in the damned first place? They can keep old newspapers in the lock boxes, but not penicillin? What have they got against penicillin?

1: Shut it!

MNS: I now present the new film from M. Night Shyamalan...

1: I love that guy!

MNS: Gentlemen, I give you...The Table.

1: Awesome!

2: I just crapped myself!

3: Like The Village, but leggier! Perfect! I'm going to pull up a chair...to The Table!

1: What's the outline? Don't leave us hanging!

MNS: The setting is a quaint small town in Northern Pennsylvania.

2: Spooky!

MNS: A single father is raising three sons.

3: Chills! Look! [sound of shirt sleeve being raised]

MNS: The first son is a mediocre athlete. The second is a science whiz. I'm thinking Culkins for both roles.

1: You're thinking, we're doing!

MNS: The movie opens as a widow puts her annual spring batch of pies out on the windowsill to cool. Trees shift in the wind. Birds squawk. There's all kinds of pies: Apple. Blueberry. Blackberry. Boysenberry. Huckleberry.

3: Rhubarb?

MNS: No.

1: Okay...so birds are squawking. No rhubarb. What next?

MNS: She twists a tap to wash her berry-stained hands. She turns back to look at the windowsill. Wind chimes are jangling madly. Dogs start barking. A hoot owl hoots. We pull back to reveal: the pies are gone.

1: Ghosts!

2: Aliens!

3: Pioneers!

MNS: Cut to: The third son. He's awkward, quiet. A blind woman approaches him. She says she sees colors around his mouth. Strange colors. Berry colors.

3: Like Boo Berry cereal!

MNS: No. The town priest, an elderly old man with a limp, limps over to the house of the single father. Pies are disappearing, he explains. The single father shrugs and goes back to raking hay. The dog starts yelping. They turn suddenly. Wind rustles through the corn. The single father calls the name of his third son, the awkward one.

3: Berry lips?

MNS: No. I mean, yes. The single father and the priest rush around to the back of the house. They search through a pile of discarded toys.

1: Discarded toys! Yikes!

2: I want my mommy!

MNS: The wind whistles. Cats get their backs up. The priest pushes a broken clown doll aside and suddenly they both see...an empty aluminum pie tin.

2: The tension!

1: [to assistant] Get me a change of underwear! Pronto!

MNS: Cut to: a shadowy figure running past a window.

1: The set-up is gold. What's the hook?

MNS: We cut to a flashback. The single father sits in a restaurant with his wife. The waiters are gaunt. The single father, who's not yet single, says nothing. The wife starts coughing. The coughing grows louder. One of the waiters is played by Donnie Wahlberg.

2: We can get him.

MNS: The wife coughs. A clatter of dishes is heard. She reaches out. Her hand wavers. The husband leans in. She croaks a single word: "Water." Then she dies.

1: It's not just a horror. It's got an emotional core.

MNS: Cut to: present day. Aliens have landed and challenged the townsfolk to a pie-eating contest. A huge oaken table is covered in hot pies. The aliens communicate through strange clicking sounds. The townsfolk understand that if they lose the pie-eating contest, they will all die.

2: I'm going to die. Get me a defibrillator! Stat!

MNS: The first two sons try to eat the pies but are vanquished by the champion alien, who looks like a big man in a rubber diving suit with a pumpkin on his head. The elderly priest runs around in terror, then trips on account of his limp. Dogs bark. Tree bark. We see trees, swaying. The old woman, the one who made the pies, drives up in an old truck.

3: This is going nowhere. I'm bored.

1: Gee, I didn't know "bored" was French for "fired." Because you are! Bored that is! By which I mean, fired! Get out!

[sound of door opening, closing]

1: [to assistant] Hand me his can of C2 if there's still some left in there! [to MNS] Go on.

MNS: The third boy approaches the table. The pie is enormous. He stares at the table. A gentle neighbourhood girl who's deaf comes by and says she loves him. He says he loves her, but she's walked away and not heard him, because she's deaf. The boy reaches for the pie. The aliens make clicking sounds. The boy starts eating pie. He can eat faster than anyone alive -- any human, that is. But the alien is faster. The boy wolfs down the pie. Some wolves wolf down a boy. The boy -- the third son, the awkward one -- starts to choke. He's eaten too much pie.

1: Don't let him die! Don't let him die!

MNS: The single father is frantic. Suddenly, The Old Woman Who Made The Pies screams out to the single father, "Remember the word!"

2: My Lord!

1: The word!

MNS: "Remember the word your wife said when she choked to death that time in the restaurant!" The single father thinks, scratches his head, then goes back to raking hay. Then he turns suddenly and shouts "Water!" and grabs a glass of water and throws it at his son's face in hopes that the water will go into his son's mouth and dislodge the pie but the son falls down and the water misses him and hits the alien who explodes because he's allergic to water.

1: Of course he is. Of course he is.

MNS: The aliens all make clicking noises and leave in spaceships. The boy lies motionless. The single father has saved the town, but his boy is dead.

1: Wow. A dead boy. That's the ending?

2: What about the twist? There's got to be a twist!

MNS: Oh, there is. Because that's when I step in, making my cameo. And I'm wearing a conical wizard's hat with moons and stars on it, because I'm a wizard.

2: I totally should have seen that coming! And yet I didn't!

MNS: And I tell the single father that I can't save the boy's life, but I can turn back time to the point at which he was still alive. And then I do, and then the boy's alive again, and the father starts crying and saying, "Yes, it all makes sense! There's a purpose to everything!" Then he asks if I can turn back time all the way to the time when his wife was still alive but I'm already gone, because I'm deaf. Roll credits.

1: So the wife stays dead?

MNS: No. I mean, yes.

1: We can live with that.

[sound of door opening, closing]

3: Excuse me, but I was listening through an empty glass pressed to the door, and I'm wondering: if the wizard turns back time to the point at which the boy was still alive, wouldn't the aliens be back, standing around the pie-eating table? Because they were there then too.

MNS: No, of course not. Because I, the wizard, explain that the aliens won't come back because of the water and weren't you fired already?

1: Yes. Yes, he was. Security!

[sound of door opening, closing, jackboots, opening, closing]

1: Gentleman, we've got ourselves a winner. It's got everything: terror, paternal love, hoot owls, huckleberreis, wind chimes, spooky discarded toys, aliens, and water. Plus, that twist! How did I not see it coming?

2: How could you?

1: We love it!

MNS: Thank you.

1: Start shipping the promotional pies! Good, Night! Ha! Get it? Good Night!

[Fin.]