M. Night Shyamalan has hired Buried screenwriter Chris Sparling to pen the thriller Twelve Strangers for Shyamalan’s genre production company, The Night Chronicles. Deadline says that the Twelve Strangers is about “a jury deliberating a case involving the supernatural.” [Insert joke about a twist ending that reveals the jury has been dead the whole time even though Shyamalan isn’t writing the movie or attached to direct] For those who don’t know, Buried stars Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive with a lighter and a cell phone as his only resources. The film received positive notices at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and will be released on October 8th.

Earlier this week, we reported that Shyamalan was shopping around a new script with Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Bruce Willis loosely attached. Deadline says that “Cooper would play a father on a desperate search for his missing child. It might stray into Taken terrain, but the father taps into some supernatural powers to aid the search.” [Insert joke about the father being dead the whole time] Hit the jump for more on Shyamalan’s deal regarding Night Chronicles.

Twelve Strangers is the second picture of a three-picture deal where Night Chronicles makes one movie a year with Media Rights Capital based on an idea from the Sixth Sense director. This was done because he’s a visionary and it’s 1999. The Night Chronicles-MRC deal has already yielded the thriller Devil directed by John Dowdle. That’s due to be released on February 11, 2011.

Shyamalan is putting the finishing touches on his slightly-racist and joyless-looking The Last Airbender, which is based on the not-racist and highly-enjoyable Nickelodeon animated series. It hits theaters on July 1st in 2D and 3D.