Warner Bros. Put out the first teaser for Remain on Tuesday, and it's an odd one by design. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Tate, an architect who holes up in a small coastal town to finish a project and instead runs into Wren, played by Phoebe Dynevor, who drags him out of his shell and straight into something darker.

The trailer plays it soft at first. Board games, flirting, a house that looks lived-in rather than staged. Then it turns. "You're not like anybody I've ever met," Gyllenhaal's Tate says, before Wren asks, "Why can't we be together, Tate?" and the footage cuts to whatever secret the town's been sitting on.

This is the M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks project that's been floating around for a while now, and it's an unusual one. Shyamalan wrote and directed the film from a story he built with Sparks. Sparks took the same story and wrote his own novel version, released last October, which The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap both note went to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Two different tellings of the same idea, one on the page, one on screen. Neither is an adaptation of the other.

When does it actually release

Here's where the sources don't quite line up. TheHollywood Reporter has Remain landing on "Valentine's Day 2027." JoBlo and TheWrap both list a specific date, February 5, 2027. Valentine's Day itself falls on a Sunday that year, so the discrepancy looks like shorthand rather than a real scheduling conflict, but CutMirchi isn't going to guess which outlet has the studio's actual release calendar. TheWrap adds that the film was originally slated for Halloween 2026 before Warner Bros. Pushed it, which tracks with a project that's clearly being positioned as a romance-first release rather than a horror one.

Sparks told The Hollywood Reporter he'd worked through most of the big names in his career already, Channing Tatum, Ryan Gosling, Zac Efron, and called landing Gyllenhaal "magical." On Dynevor, who he says was one of three actors in contention, he said simply that she "was terrific."

The supporting cast includes Ashley Walters, Julie Hagerty, Jay O. Sanders, Tracy Ifeachor, Hannah James, Caleb Ruminer, Kieran Mulcare and Maria Dizzia. Shyamalan produces with Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock and Theresa Park, and Sparks executive produces.

Shyamalan has apparently called this his highest-testing film to date, per JoBlo, which is the kind of claim that means nothing until an audience actually sits through it. What's clear is the pitch: a Sparks romance wearing a Shyamalan twist, sold as counter-programming for a Valentine's weekend that usually belongs to straightforward tearjerkers.

A full trailer or more festival buzz would help settle how seriously to take the supernatural angle. For now, all anyone's got is two minutes of chemistry and a warning that something's off in that town.