M. Night Shyamalan

Manoj Nelliyattu “M. Night” Shyamalan born August 6, 1970 is an American filmmaker, philanthropist, and actor. He is known for making original films with contemporary supernatural plots and twist endings. He was born in Pondicherry, Pondicherry, India, and raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania. The cumulative gross of his films exceeds $3 billion globally.

He made his directorial debut in 1992 with his first movie Praying with Anger. His second movie was the comedy-drama film Wide Awake (1998). His most well-received films include the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense (1999), the superhero thriller Unbreakable (2000), and the science fiction horror Signs (2002). For The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Afterward, Shyamalan released a series of poorly received but sometimes financially successful movies, including the period-piece thriller The Village (2004), the dark fantasy Lady in the Water (2006), the eco-thriller The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010) (an adaptation based on the first season of the Nickelodeon animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender), and the science fiction film After Earth (2013). Following the financial failure of After Earth, Shyamalan’s career was revived with the release of the found footage horror film The Visit (2015), the psychological thriller Split (2016), and the superhero thriller Glass (2019). With a total budget of $34 million between them, these three films earned a combined box office of $625 million. Glass is the third and final chapter of his Unbreakable film series, which commenced in 2000.

In addition to his directorial work, Shyamalan was story creator and a producer for the horror film Devil (2010). Shyamalan was also called in for an uncredited rewrite for the teen film She’s All That (1999) and also served as a writer for the film Stuart Little (1999). He is also one of the executive producers and occasional director of Wayward Pines and the critically acclaimed series Servant.

Shyamalan is also known for filming and setting his films in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Most of his commercially successful films were co-produced and released by Walt Disney Studios’ Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures and Universal imprints. In 2008, Shyamalan was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India.

Shyamalan’s next two motion pictures are slated to be released under Universal in 2021 (Old) and 2023.

Early life

Shyamalan was born in Puducherry, India, a town in the Union Territory of Pondicherry. The son of Indian parents, his father, Dr. Nelliyattu C. Shyamalan, is a Malayali neurologist from Puducherry and a JIPMER graduate, his mother, Dr. Jayalakshmi, an ethnic Tamil, is an OB-GYN.

Shyamalan’s parents emigrated to the United States when he was six weeks old. Shyamalan was raised in his hometown of Penn Valley, Pennsylvania. Shyamalan was raised Hindu. He attended the private Roman Catholic grammar school Waldron Mercy Academy, followed by the Episcopal Academy, a private Episcopal high school located at the time in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. Shyamalan earned the New York University Merit Scholarship in 1988, and was also a National Merit Scholar. Shyamalan is an alumnus of New York University Tisch School of the Arts in Manhattan, graduating in 1992. It was while studying there that he adopted “Night” as his second name.

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. By the time he was seventeen, he had made forty-five 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.

Career

Film

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. 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 and earned 1999 Young Artist Award nominations for Best Drama, and, for Cross, Best Performance. Only in limited release, the film grossed $305,704 in theaters, against a $6 million budget.

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 Rachel Leigh Cook. On June 17, 2013, Jack Lechner (who served as Miramax’s head of development in the late 1990s) confirmed that both Shyamalan and Fleming 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.

Shyamalan gained international recognition when he wrote and directed 1999’s The Sixth Sense, which became the second-highest grossing horror movie of all time. He became a director whose name could, like Spielberg, market a film. 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. After the film fell through, Shyamalan later said it was too “tricky” to arrange and “not the right thing” for him to do.

Shyamalan followed The Sixth Sense by writing and directing Unbreakable, released in 2000. It was a stealth comic book movie within a thriller and 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 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”.

His 2002 film was Signs, where he also played Ray Reddy. It was regarding how a man regains his faith in God during an alien invasion. It was both critically and financial successful and grossed $408 million from a budget of $72 million.

His next movie was The Village (2004). It was regarding 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.

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 a kid born in the same city as me  — 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”.

Released in 2006, Lady in the Water, a bedtime story about a water nymph and an apartment superintendent was both critically and financially unsuccessful.

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

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-but financially successful as it as it grossed $319 million from a budget of $150 million.

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. 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. The movie was about a group of people stuck in an elevator with the devil, and starred Chris Messina. The film was not previewed by critics before its release.

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

Shyamalan announced in January 2014 that he would be working again with Bruce Willis on a film titled Labor of Love. 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 trip. After revising the film, which Shyamalan had shot in secret, Universal picked up rights to The Visit. The movie went on gross $98 million worldwide on a budget of $5 million – the fifth-highest grossing thriller film of the year. Universal released the movie on September 11, 2015.

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

In 2019, he released Glass as a sequel to his 19-year trilogy inclusive of previous films Unbreakable and Split. The movie grossed over $247 million worldwide.

His next film, Old, is set to be released on July 23, 2021. The film is slated to star Gael Garcia Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliott.

Television

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. The second season of Servant completed filming in fall 2020 under COVID protocols.

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.

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.

He also appeared in an episode of the series Entourage.

Philanthropy

Shyamalan cofounded the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation with his wife, Dr. Bhavna Shyamalan, in 2001. The M. Night Shyamalan Foundation supports grassroots work by identifying and empowering emerging leaders in their communities removing the barriers created by poverty and inequality in their communities.

Controversy

Sci-Fi Channel hoax

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 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 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 a supposed rift with the filmmakers ever occurred. The hoax included a nonexistent 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, Zap2It, and the New York Post, among others.

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.”

Plagiarism accusations

In 2003, a Pennsylvanian screenwriter named Robert McElhenney (no relation to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator and producer, Rob McElhenney) sued Shyamalan, alleging similarities between Signs and McElhenney’s unpublished script Lord of the Barrens: The Jersey Devil. 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. 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.

Personal life

Shyamalan married Dr. Bhavna Vaswani, a fellow student whom he met at New York University. The couple have three daughters, including director Ishana and musician Saleka. His production company, Blinding Edge Pictures, is located in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. 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 and Glass. It is run by Shyamalan and Ashwin Rajan. His cousin is actor Ritesh Rajan.

Shyamalan is a season ticket holder of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Shyamalan and his family live near Philadelphia at Ravenwood, a 125-acre estate, built around a 27,000-square-foot 1937 Georgian Revival house.

Saleka Shyamalan, known professionally as Saleka, is one of Night’s three daughters. Born in 1996, she’s an American R&B singer and songwriter. Saleka studied classical piano as a child but decided to pursue a singing and songwriting career at the age of 16. She studied Literary Arts and Music at Brown University and has opened for acts like Boyz II Men, Baby Rose and Summer Walker. Upon debuting her first single, “Clarity”, in September 2020, Refinery29 called Saleka “a new artist to watch”. Saleka’s sister, Ishana, directed the music video for “Clarity”.

Filmography

Critical analysis and box office performance

The Sixth Sense gave Shyamalan the reputation of, Rolling Stone wrote, “the guy who makes the scary movies with a twist”. In 2008, Shyamalan said it was a common misperception that “all my movies have twist endings, or that they’re all scary. All my movies are spiritual and all have an emotional perspective”. He nonetheless avoided plot twists for years, until again using them starting with The Visit in 2015. Rolling Stone wrote in 2018,

In his twenties, says, “I don’t think you could have told me that making thrillers for your whole life wasn’t a bad thing. At first it was a sense of, ‘Hey, I can make anything.’ But that’s hypocritical, because when I pick up an Agatha Christie novel in my library, I have a strong expectation. So, I get it. . . . When I became happy with the idea of making thrillers for the rest of my life, everything went right.”

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”.

After the release of The Happening, The Guardian‘s Kim Newman noted Shyamalan’s earnestness and questioned, “Can it be a kind of racism that the Indian-born, Philadelphia-raised auteur is hammered for his apparent character (or funny name) rather more than, say, Quentin Tarantino or Spike Lee?”

Shyamalan has also won numerous Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Film in 2006 and 2010, while being nominated in 2008 for The Happening and 2013 for After Earth. In 2016 he was also nominated for The Razzie Redeemer Award.

The Village, Lady in the Water and Split have been included in Cahiers du Cinéma annual top ten lists.