In the wake of tepid movie reviews, M. Night Shyamalan is playing down expectations for The Happening.

“I wanted it to be a fantastic, fun B-movie,” Shyamalan told Reuters about his latest film. “The number-one thing is I want people to say: ‘That was a really fun B-movie.’”

As for his motivation in writing the flick, the director said:

“There’s so many things to be paranoid about right now. I was so clear about what kind of movie I was making,” adding that he hopes viewers will wonder if the plot “could really happen.”

What do you think: Is Shyamalan being sincere? Or just playing down expectations for a film that appears headed for a flop?

M. Night Shyamalan told SCI FI Wire that he’s excited to be directing The Last Airbender, a live-action fantasy-adventure movie based on Nickelodeon’s animated SF/action/martial-arts series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

“It has martial arts and spirituality and the supernatural, and it has Buddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy - really, everything I talk about - all in one movie,” Shyamalan said.

The Sixth Sense director added:

“It has a mythology. It’s Shakespearean. It’s all this incredible stuff, and it has a balance. All these movies are plays on magic, whether it’s Lord of the Rings or The Matrix or Star Wars even, and each one of them relates to me in a different way, in its belief system.”

Up next, of course, Shyamalan is responsible for The Happening. It opens this weekend.

Mark Wahlberg has worked with Jonathan Demme, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese.

But the former rapper is really excited to work with his next director, M. Night Shyamalan.

“The first scene we shot was a five-page scene in a classroom that any other director I’ve worked with would have taken three days to shoot, but we shot it by lunch,” Wahlberg said about his work with Shyamalan on The Happening.

“It’s beautiful. I’ve never walked into a trailer where your sides are there and your storyboards are there for the day. He just knows what he wants.”

And we love seeing what the director wants on screen… ignoring the piece of junk that was The Lady in the Water.

Set amidst a worldwide catastrophe that has the planet fighting back against humanity, infecting people with a neurotoxin which makes them want to kill themselves, Wahlberg insisted The Happening is more character study than apocalyptic vision.

“My wife, played by Zooey Deschanel, is a therapist. The movie is about our relationship and the conflicts we’re having set [amid] this kind of horrific disaster,” Wahlberg said. “I play kind of a nerdy science teacher from Philadelphia - the best teacher you’ve ever seen, but I have difficulties in being the man she wants me to be. I am extremely positive and optimistic and she’s the opposite.”