‘Glass’ on HBO: Sarah Paulson Still Wants an Ellie Staple Spin-Off

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the 2019 film, Glass.

After nearly two decades, M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy finally came to close in January 2019 with Glass, which is airing on HBO tonight at 8 p.m. ET. But American Horror Story star Sarah Paulson hopes that Glass is not really the end.

For the uninitiated, Glass is a crossover sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable and 2016’s Split. The first film starred Bruce Willis as David Dunn (aka The Overseer), a man with superhuman strength, indestructible skin, and the ability to see visions of crimes committed by people that his touches, and Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price (aka Mr. Glass), a mass murderer with a condition that renders his bones extremely fragile. The second film starred James McAvoy as Kevin (aka The Horde), a man with multiple personality disorder who switches between 23 different identities. In Glass, all three characters are brought together in a mental hospital, where they receive therapy from Dr. Ellie Staple (Paulson), who claims to specialize in patients who believe they are superhuman.

It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie, so of course, there’s a twist. Spoiler alert: Dr. Ellie Staple is not a psychiatrist who specializes in people who think they are superheroes, she is an agent of a global initiative to suppress superhumans, for the good of humanity.

Paulson spoke to Decider in April about that twist ahead of the film’s DVD and On-Demand release. She admitted she was wary when she realized she’d be playing the film’s villain. “I said yes to doing the movie without ever having read the script, so I had no idea what I was even going to be doing in the movie,” Paulson said. “I certainly didn’t know I was going to be the one responsible for the demise of so many beloved characters. I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with that—I didn’t really want the trolls hating on me.”

And, she said, there were some negative reactions to her character that she saw on social media. “It’s never easy.” But at the same time, Paulson also saw fans who loved her character and asked for another film—specifically an Ellie Staple spin-off movie.

“It’s still my hope that we’ll do another movie,” Paulson said. “Some fans were tweeting, ‘We want an Ellie Staple movie! We wanna know more!’ I was like, ‘Yeah!’ That would obviously be totally thrilling, but I’ve heard nothing. I don’t believe there are any plans to do anything like that. Night has said that [Glass] would be the last in the trilogy. But I do love him, and I hope I get to work with him again.”

Unfortunately for Paulson and the Ellie Staple fans, it seems highly unlikely a spin-off movie will ever come to fruition. Despite Glass performing well at the box office, Shyamalan has said he has no interest in expanding beyond the trilogy into a cinematic universe. “We’re not doing that,” he told Vulture when asked about the possibility of more movies. “I have the sequel rights to most of my movies, essentially for the reason to not do them.”

That sounds like a pretty firm “No.” Oh, well. There’s always Ellie Staple fanfiction, and you can read Decider’s full interview with Paulson in the meantime.

Where to watch Glass