M. Night Shyamalan gained renown with his movie The Sixth Sense, which he wrote and directed. It was a box-office hit, earning Oscar nominations that included Best Director and Best Picture.
Born in Madras, India, on August 6, 1970, Shyamalan was raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley. He fell in love with cameras as a child, and studied film in college. Also credited as Manoj Night Shyamalan, he is said to have taken the name "Night" when he was away at college.
Shyamalan flopped with his first major theatrical effort, Wide Awake (1998), with Robert Loggia, Rosie O'Donnell and Denis Leary. His next project was The Sixth Sense, with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment — which made him a hit. He went on to write the much-acclaimed screenplay for Stuart Little, wrote and directed Unbreakable (with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson), wrote the screenplay for Signs (starring Mel Gibson), and wrote, produced and directed The Village. Later films include Lady in the Water and The Happening.
Best Known As: The writer and director of The Sixth Sense
Name at birth: Manoj Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan is a filmmaker whose suspense thriller The Sixth Sense (1999) was a surprise sensation. Raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Shyamalan studied filmmaking at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His first two feature films, Praying with Anger (1992) and Wide Awake (1998, with Rosie O'Donnell) didn't earn much at the box office, but The Sixth Sense (starring Bruce Willis) was one of that year's top earners, and its surprise twist ending made it surely the year's most-discussed film. The Sixth Sense also launched the career of young actor Haley Joel Osment and received six Oscar nominations (including two for Shyamalan). Although his next features failed to live up to the high expectations of many critics, they proved him to be a skilled writer and director and furthered his reputation as a specialist in supernatural dramas. These other films include Unbreakable (2000, with Willis and Samuel L. Jackson), Signs (2002, starring Mel Gibson, The Village (2004, with Sigourney Weaver and Adrien Brody), and The Lady in the Water (2006, with Paul Giamatti).
Shyamalan adopted the nickname "Night" while in college... He wrote the screenplay for the 1999 Geena Davis movie Stuart Little... Shyamalan proved his marketing savvy with a "guerilla" promotional stunt for The Village, in which he participated in a fake documentary for the Sci-Fi Channel called The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan (2004).
A director who struck gold with the 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan came out of almost nowhere to become one of the year's greatest sensations. The second biggest moneymaker of 1999 (the first being Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace), The Sixth Sense also proved to be a critical favorite, earning a slew of Oscar nominations that included Best Director and Best Picture.
Born in Madras, India, on August 6, 1970, Shyamalan was raised in the posh Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley. The son of doctors, he developed a passion for filmmaking when he was given a Super-8 camera at the age of eight. By the time he was 17, Shyamalan -- who idolized Steven Spielberg -- had made 45 home movies, and after receiving a Catholic school education, he studied filmmaking at the Tisch School of the Arts. He graduated in 1992, and that same year he made his first feature film, Praying with Anger, which was based to some extent on his trip back to the country of his birth.
Shyamalan's first major theatrical effort was Wide Awake (1998), a film he partially shot in the Catholic school he had attended, as well as Bryn Mawr College. The story of a young Catholic school student attempting to cope with the death of his grandfather (Robert Loggia), the film -- which also starred Rosie O'Donnell, Dana Delany, and Denis Leary -- quickly plummeted into box office oblivion.
Shyamalan had considerably better luck with his next project, 1999's The Sixth Sense. A supernatural thriller about a young boy (Oscar-nominated Haley Joel Osment) who is able to communicate with the spirits of dead people, it was a sleeper hit and gave its director his unequivocal career breakthrough. Graced with an understated cast of performers and a twist ending, the film garnered incredible word-of-mouth among audiences and became the must-see film of the late summer, well into the fall. The Academy in turn showered the film with seven Oscar nominations, including nods for Shyamalan's script and direction. He enjoyed further success that same year as the screenwriter for Stuart Little, earning praise for his smart, funny script.
Following the success of The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan -- who continued to reside in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife and daughter -- directed another supernatural thriller, Unbreakable. Starring Bruce Willis (who had also starred in The Sixth Sense) as a man who undergoes mysterious changes following a train accident, the mannered, pensive thriller was released in 2000 to mixed critical reviews and a healthy -- if brief -- box-office run. A curiously low-key film considering its comic-book underpinnings, Unbreakable retained much of The Sixth Sense's sharp direction, though its lukewarm reception found the director hesitant to expand the film into a trilogy as originally planned. Approached by producer Frank Marshall to pen the fourth chapter in the further adventures of Indiana Jones, Shyamalan gracefully turned down the offer citing his reluctance to enter a collaborative effort with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford, and rejected yet another offer shortly thereafter, this time to direct the third Harry Potter film .
Deciding instead on a begin work on an entirely new project, Shyamalan penned a screenplay concerning a rural family who discover crop circles on their farm, selling it to Disney in April of 2001. Though the role of the family patriarch was originally intended for an older actor, Shyamalan made a few minor alterations when Mel Gibson expressed interest in starring in the film, with You Can Count on Me star Mark Ruffalo cast as his brother. Another unforeseen casting change beset the production when Ruffalo pulled out of the film due to health problems, and Joaquin Phoenix stepped in to assume the role with production moving along as planned following the brief delay. If Unbreakable was a subdued hit, then Signs was a full-blown blockbuster, easily exceeding the 200-million-dollar mark.
With late-summer firmly established as Shyamalan's most-profitable stomping grounds, he began work on his 2004 project, the buzzed-about period allegory The Village. After many casting rumors and changes -- including the mention of Ashton Kutcher for the lead -- the director locked in a group of talented actors ranging from newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron), to the recently Oscar-anointed Adrien Brody, to distinguished Hollywood veterans like William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver. Reuniting with Signs star Joaquin Phoenix for the lead role, Shyamalan wove an intricate -- or convoluted, according to critics -- tale of a remote pioneer-style community where the village residents dress in muted browns and yellows and live in fear of "those we do not speak of," namely, scampering creatures with thorny exoskeletons. Touchstone Pictures' marketing push ensured a colossal opening for the film, but when word-of-mouth spread about The Village's rug-pulling final twist, box office dropped off considerably.
Regrouping after the critical drubbing and somewhat lackluster returns of his 2004 film, Shyamalan returned in 2006 with a film he curiously dubbed "a bedtime story," the somber fable Lady in the Water. A subdued take on the mermaid-out-of-water tale put forth in Ron Howard's comedy Splash some twenty years earlier, Shyamalan's film once again starred Howard's daughter Bryce -- this time cast as a water nymph who mysteriously appears one night to a apartment-complex superintendent played by Sideways' schlub laureate Paul Giamatti. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
Manoj Shyamalan (/ˈʃæməlɑːn/;[2]Maṉōj Śyāmaḷaṉ; born 6 August 1970), known professionally as M. Night Shyamalan, is an Indian-born American screenwriter, film director, and producer known for making movies with contemporary supernatural plots that climax with a twist ending. He is also known for filming his movies (and staging his plots) in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was raised. Shyamalan released his first film, Praying with Anger, in 1992 while he was a student at New York University. His second movie, Wide Awake, made in 1995 but not released until three years later, did not succeed financially.
Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999's The Sixth Sense, which was a commercial success and later nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He followed The Sixth Sense by writing and directing Unbreakable, released in 2000, which received positive reviews. His 2002 film Signs, where he also played Ray Reddy, gained both critical and financial success. His next movie The Village (2004) received mixed reviews from the critics, but turned out to be a financial success. His later fantasy film Lady in the Water (2006) performed worse critically and financially. The film The Happening (2008) was a financial success but also received negative reviews. The Last Airbender (2010) received extremely negative reviews in the United States and won 5 Razzie Awards, but has gone on to make nearly $320 million internationally at the box office. He wrote the story for and produced his latest film, Devil (2010), but did not direct it. The film was not previewed by critics before its release, eventually receiving mixed reviews. Devil was not a blockbuster hit, but has become a commercial success relative to its budget.
Most of Shyamalan's commercially successful films were co-produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures film division.
Shyamalan had an early desire to be a filmmaker when he was given a Super-8 camera at a young age. Though his father wanted him to follow in the family practice of medicine, his mother encouraged him to follow his passion.[8] By the time he was 17 the Steven Spielberg fan had made 45 home movies. On each DVD release of his films (beginning with The Sixth Sense and with the exception of Lady in the Water), he has included a scene from one of these childhood movies which he feels represents his first attempt at the same kind of film.
Shyamalan made his first film, the semi-autobiographical dramaPraying with Anger, while still a student at NYU, using money borrowed from family and friends.[9] It was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 1992,[10] and played commercially at one theater for a week in rural Woodstock, Illinois.[10] When the film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, Shyamalan was introduced by David Overbey who predicted that the world would see more of Shyamalan in the years to come. Praying with Anger has also been shown on Canadian television. Filmed in Chennai, it is his only film to be shot outside of Pennsylvania.
Shyamalan wrote and directed his second movie, Wide Awake, in 1995, though it was not released until 1998.[11] 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 Julia Stiles, and Camryn Manheim. Wide Awake was filmed in a school Shyamalan attended as a child[12] and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance.[13] Only in limited release, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters.[14]
Although Shyamalan has stated he is in the middle of directing his next thriller, it has been confirmed that his next film will be a sci-fi epic titled After Earth, to star Jaden Smith. When asked about it in an interview, Shyamalan denied the idea of shooting it in 3D but stated he was planning something technically special. It will be the first film Shyamalan has directed, but not written.
Personal life
In 1993, Shyamalan married psychologist Bhavna Vaswani, a fellow student whom he met at NYU[16] and with whom he has two daughters. The family resides on a sprawling estate in Willistown, Pennsylvania, near Shyamalan's usual shooting site of Philadelphia. His production company, Blinding Edge Pictures is located in Berwyn, PA.[17]
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, Steven Spielberg.[18] After the film fell through, Shyamalan later said it was too "tricky" to arrange and "not the right thing" for him to do.[19]
Shyamalan's name was linked with the 2001 film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but it conflicted with the production of Unbreakable. In July 2006, while doing press tours for Lady in the Water, Shyamalan had said he was still 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".[20][21]
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. "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", Shyamalan said. "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".[22]
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.[23] 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.[24] The movie was about a group of people stuck in an elevator with the devil, and starred Chris Messina.[25] The next film in the Night Chronicles series will be called Reincarnate. It will be scripted by Chris Sparling and directed by Daniel Stamm.
Television
Sci-Fi Channel
In 2004, Shyamalan was involved in a media hoax with Sci-Fi Channel, which was eventually uncovered by the press. Sci-Fi claimed in its "documentary" special — The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan, shot on the set of The Village — that Shyamalan was legally dead for nearly a half-hour while drowned in a frozen pond in a childhood accident, and that upon being rescued he had experiences of communicating with spirits, fueling an obsession with the supernatural. The Sci-Fi Channel also claimed that Shyamalan had grown "sour" when the "documentary" filmmakers' questions got too personal, and had therefore withdrawn from participating and threatened to sue the filmmakers.
In truth, Shyamalan developed the hoax with Sci-Fi, going so far as having Sci-Fi 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 the supposed rift with the filmmakers ever occurred. The hoax included a non-existent Sci-Fi publicist, "David Westover", whose name appeared on press releases regarding the special. Sci-Fi also fed false news stories to the Associated Press[26] and Zap2It.com,[27] among others. A New York Post news item, based on a Sci Fi press release, referred to Shyamalan's attorneys threatening to sue the filmmakers; the attorneys named were non-existent.
After an AP reporter confronted Sci-Fi 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 Sci-Fi'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."[28]
With the exception of The Sixth Sense, a common criticism of Shyamalan's works is that they feature better direction than screenwriting.[38][39] He has also been labeled a "one-trick pony" for his continuous use of the "twist" element in his screenplays.[38] After the release of The Village, Slate's Michael Agger noted that Shyamalan was following "an uncomfortable pattern" of "making fragile, sealed-off movies that fell apart when exposed to outside logic."[40]
In a May 31, 2008, interview with the London Independent, Shyamalan offered this answer to the question about his "one-trick" movies: "[A common misperception of me is] that all my movies have twist endings, or that they're all scary. All my movies are spiritual and all have an emotional perspective."[41]
Plagiarism accusations
Robert McIlhinney, a Pennsylvania screenwriter, sued Shyamalan in 2003, alleging similarity of Signs to his unpublished script Lord of the Barrens: The Jersey Devil.[42][43][44]
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