Rufus Sewell has joined the cast of M. Night Shyamalan's new film.

The 52-year-old actor has joined the cast of the new movie alongside Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, Gael Garcia Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie and Aaron Wolff.

Shyamalan will write, produce and direct the flick but plot and character details are shrouded in secrecy and the title is yet to be revealed.

The thriller forms part of 'The Sixth Sense' filmmaker's deal with Universal, with the studio releasing his last three motion pictures, 'Glass', 'Split' and 'The Visit'.

Shyamalan previously revealed that he intended to make ''weird and dark'' pictures for Universal.

The 50-year-old director said: ''I'm loving this approach from 'The Visit' on where they're minimal, contained, I own them, we take big tonal risks and try to hit that note of absurd-but-grounded, that dark humour moment and deal with some complicated things and not necessarily take the audience where they're comfortable, both during or even at the end.

''That's all mitigated because we're working with a respectable number and I feel like I'm being a good partner to my distributors.

''I like that because it allows me to iterate really fast in the making of these stories, so those films follow that architecture of approach and process.

''Even if it's tricking myself into being more dangerous, it's working because when I think about these three films that I'm thinking about - all weird and dark - I think that they speak to each other a little bit.''

Rufus is also set to star as Elvis Presley's father Vernon in Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis', an upcoming biopic of the music icon.