M. Night Shyamalan

Shyamalan at a press conference
for The Happening in 2008.

Shyamalan made his first film, the semi-autobiographical drama Praying with Anger, while still a student at NYU, using money borrowed from family and friends.[18] He wrote and directed his second movie, Wide Awake. His parents were the film's associate producers. The drama dealt with a ten-year-old Catholic schoolboy (Joseph Cross) who, after the death of his grandfather (Robert Loggia), searches for God. The film's supporting cast included Dana Delany and Denis Leary as the boy's parents, as well as Rosie O'Donnell, Julia Stiles, and Camryn Manheim. Wide Awake was filmed in a school Shyamalan attended as a child[19] and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance.[20] Only in limited release, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters, against a $6 million budget.[21]

That same year Shyamalan co-wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little with Greg Brooker. In 2013, he revealed he was the ghostwriter for the 1999 film She's All That, a teen comedy starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook.[22] On June 17, 2013, Jack Lechner (who served as Miramax's head of development in the late 1990s) confirmed that both Shyamalan and R. Lee Fleming, Jr. contributed to the script: Fleming wrote the initial script that Miramax bought while Shyamalan did an uncredited rewrite (doing more than "a polish") that got the film green-lit. Lechner reiterated that content from both writers was included in the final cut of the film.[23]

Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999's The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis, and which became the second-highest grossing horror movie of all time.[24] The Sixth Sense was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

In July 2000, on The Howard Stern Show, Shyamalan said he had met with Spielberg and was in early talks to write the script for the fourth Indiana Jones film. This would have given Shyamalan a chance to work with his longtime idol.[25] After the film fell through, Shyamalan later said it was too "tricky" to arrange and "not the right thing" for him to do.[26]

Shyamalan followed The Sixth Sense by writing and directing Unbreakable (2000), again starring Willis, a stealth superhero film within a thriller which was both critically and financially successful.

Shyamalan's name was linked with the 2001 film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but it conflicted with the production of Unbreakable. In July 2006, while doing press tours for Lady in the Water, Shyamalan expressed he remained interested in directing one of the last two Harry Potter films: "The themes that run through it ... the empowering of children, a positive outlook ... you name it, it falls in line with my beliefs", Shyamalan said. "I enjoy the humor in it. When I read the first Harry Potter and was thinking about making it, I had a whole different vibe in my head of it".[27]

His next film, Signs, where he also played Ray Reddy, was released in 2002. The film stars Mel Gibson as a former Episcopalian priest who regains his faith in God during an alien invasion. It was both critically and financially successful and grossed $408 million from a budget of $72 million.

Shyamalan next directed The Village (2004), about an isolated community living in the woods. Although it received mixed reviews, it was financially successful as it grossed $257 million from a budget of $60 million.

M. Night Shyamalan and Bryce Dallas Howard at the Spanish premiere of The Village (in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, 2006).

After the release of The Village in 2004, Shyamalan had been planning a film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi with 20th Century Fox, but later backed out so that he could make Lady in the Water. In an interview he said about his reasons for dropping out of that project:[28]

I love that book. I mean, it's basically [the story of] a kid born in the same city as me [Pondicherry, India] — it almost felt predestined. But I was hesitant because the book has kind of a twist ending. And I was concerned that as soon as you put my name on it, everybody would have a different experience. Whereas if someone else did it, it would be much more satisfying, I think. Expectations, you've got to be aware of them. I'm wishing them all great luck. I hope they make a beautiful movie.

Released in 2006, Lady in the Water, a bedtime story about a water nymph and an apartment superintendent, was both critically and financially unsuccessful, only grossing $72 million worldwide from a budget of $70 million.

Next was the film The Happening, a B-movie about trees killing humans, featuring a teacher and his wife fleeing from contaminated cities into the countryside. It was critically unsuccessful but financially successful as it grossed $163 million from a budget of $48 million.[29]

In July 2008, it was announced that Shyamalan had partnered with Media Rights Capital to form a production company called Night Chronicles. Shyamalan would produce, but not direct, one film a year for three years.[30] The first of the three films was Devil, a supernatural thriller directed by siblings John and Drew Dowdle. The script was written by Brian Nelson, based on an original idea from Shyamalan.[31] The movie was about a group of people stuck in an elevator with the devil, and starred Chris Messina.[32] The film was not previewed by critics before its release.

In 2010, he directed The Last Airbender, based on the first season of the Nickelodeon TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was critically unsuccessful—with significant criticism aimed at its casting of white actors in Asian and Native American-inspired roles, yet was a financial success, grossing $319 million from a budget of $150 million.

In 2013, Shyamalan directed the film After Earth, based on a script by Gary Whitta and starring Will Smith and his son, Jaden. It was received poorly by critics, and was financially unsuccessful. Shyamalan later described his thinking in 2013 as full of doubts, introspection and questioning.[33]

Shyamalan announced in January 2014 that he would be working again with Bruce Willis on a film titled Labor of Love.[34] As of March 2022, and the retirement of Willis, this film had yet to be produced.

Shyamalan's reputation was poor and most Hollywood studios passed on his self-funded, low-budget horror-comedy The Visit, featuring a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong visit. After revising the film,[33] which Shyamalan had shot in secret, Universal picked up rights to The Visit. The movie went on to gross $98 million worldwide on a budget of $5 million[35] – the fifth-highest grossing thriller film of the year.[36][37] Universal released the movie on September 11, 2015.[37]

In 2017, Shyamalan released the movie Split. It was both critically and financially successful and grossed $279 million from a budget of $9 million.[38]

In 2019, he released Glass as the final installment in his 19-year trilogy inclusive of previous films Unbreakable and Split. The movie grossed over $247 million worldwide.[39][38]

M. Night Shyamalan's film, Old, a thriller about tourists who begin aging rapidly on a mysterious beach, was shot in Dominican Republic[40] and released on July 23, 2021. The film stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz, Alexa Swinton, Nolan River, and Emun Elliott.[41][42][43][44] The film received mixed reviews from critics.

In October 2021, Shyamalan announced that his next film Knock at the Cabin would be released in cinemas on February 3, 2023.[45] In February 2023, it was revealed Shyamalan's next film, titled Trap, would be released in theatres on August 2, 2024, by Warner Bros. Pictures.[46]

Shyamalan is the executive producer on the Apple TV series Servant. Shyamalan directed several episodes, including the pilot. Servant was renewed for a second series in advance of the season one premiere.[47] The second season of Servant completed filming in fall 2020 under COVID protocols.[48]

Shyamalan was also instrumental in the creation of the Fox science fiction series Wayward Pines (2015–2016), for which he executive produced and directed the pilot episode. The series became the most-watched show of that summer.[49]

In 2016, TNT first announced that Shyamalan would be responsible for a reboot series for Tales from the Crypt. As of June 2017 the series had been cancelled due to a number of legal reasons.[50]

He also appeared in an episode of the series Entourage.[51]

Shyamalan's production company, Blinding Edge Pictures,[52] is located in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.[53] Blinding Edge has produced Servant, Wayward Pines, Devil, The Happening, Lady in the Water, The Village, Signs, Unbreakable, The Last Airbender, After Earth, The Visit, Split, Glass and Old. It is run by Shyamalan and Ashwin Rajan.[54] In February 2023, the company signed a multi-year first-look deal with Warner Bros., among them the Shyamalan-directed Trap, set for a theatrical release on August 2, 2024.[55]

In 2004, Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with SyFy Channel, which was eventually uncovered by the press. SyFy claimed in its "documentary" special The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, shot on the set of The Village, that as a child, Shyamalan had been dead for nearly a half hour while drowned in a frozen pond in an accident, and that upon being rescued he had experiences of communicating with spirits, fueling an obsession with the supernatural.

In truth, Shyamalan developed the hoax with SyFy, going so far as having SyFy staffers sign non-disclosure agreements with a $5 million fine attached and requiring Shyamalan's office to formally approve each step. Neither the childhood accident nor a supposed rift with the filmmakers ever occurred. The hoax included a nonexistent SyFy publicist, "David Westover", whose name appeared on press releases regarding the special. SyFy also fed false news stories to the Associated Press,[78] Zap2It,[79] and the New York Post,[80] among others.

After an AP reporter confronted SyFy Channel president Bonnie Hammer at a press conference, Hammer admitted the hoax, saying it was part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to generate pre-release publicity for The Village. This prompted SyFy's parent company, NBC Universal, to state that the undertaking was "not consistent with our policy at NBC. We would never intend to offend the public or the press and we value our relationship with both."[81]

In 2003, a Pennsylvanian screenwriter named Robert McElhenney (unrelated to actor and producer Rob McElhenney) sued Shyamalan, alleging similarities between Signs and McElhenney's unpublished script Lord of the Barrens: The Jersey Devil.[82][83] In 2004, Margaret Peterson Haddix claimed that The Village has numerous similarities to her young adult novel Running Out of Time (1996), prompting discussions with publisher Simon & Schuster about filing a lawsuit.[82][83][84] In response to both allegations, Disney and Shyamalan's production company Blinding Edge issued statements calling the claims "meritless".

Orson Scott Card has claimed that many elements of The Sixth Sense were plagiarized from his novel Lost Boys, although he has said that enough had been changed that there was no point in suing.[85]