M. Night Shyamalan terrified Universal with Split‘s twist ending
The twist that brought us Glass scared the hell out of Universal executives
Film News M. Night Shyamalan
Master of creeps (sweeps and bleeps), M. Night Shyamalan has been scaring audiences for more than two decades with high-concept stories about beaches that make you old. But it was the ending of Split that got some of the loudest screams of his career. Not when it played for general audiences, though. It was when the director shared the shocking ending of the film with Universal. So, if you still haven’t seen Split (which you should because it’s very good) but still want to read this article, please be aware that we’re going to spoil the ending. Though, it’s also very likely that you won’t care at all. So, um, reader, beware.
Split’s surprising ending features the character David Dunn (Bruce Willis), last seen in Shyamalan’s movie Unbreakable, watching Split’s aftermath on TV. The conclusion placed Split in the wider Unbreakable universe, which Shyamalan had hinted at for years. Speaking with the ReelBlend podcast, the director said that when Universal saw a Disney character (Disney imprint Touchstone produced Unbreakable), they freaked.
“I go to the Universal Studios chairman, [the] marketing team, everyone’s in the theater,” Shyamalan said. “We pull down the lights, and we play them Split. They don’t know the ending that they’re watching. They didn’t even know I shot it because I didn’t even send them the dailies,” The lights go down. They watch the whole movie. Then this scene comes on, and they’re completely flummoxed.”
“They look at me, and they’re like, ‘What are you saying? That’s a Disney movie!’ And I go, ‘It’s all good. We have the permission to do it!’ Can you imagine? You are the chairman of the studio, and the guy shows you that it’s a sequel to a movie from another studio?”
According to Shyamalan, that scene was not in the script, meaning he sold them the picture without mentioning the ending. It was only after the movie wrapped that he and his bro Bruce decided to go to Philly for three hours and shoot:
When I wrote that movie, I didn’t put the end scene on. I handed it to the studio without that end scene on. We shot it without that end scene on. We previewed it without that end scene on. And then the best part was, I said, ‘Let’s just go for it.’ Lemme call Bruce and say, ‘Hey dude, would you just come to Philly for, like, three hours and shoot this thing for me?’ And he was like, ‘Why, what?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I did this movie, and it’s kind of in the Unbreakableworld. I don’t know if we’ll ever shoot a sequel. Do you just want to just come for three hours, bro?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll come.’”
The twists keep on coming because Shyamalan’s latest, Old, is currently the number one movie in America. So it’s safe to assume that Universal forgives him for the scare.
[via IndieWire]
49 Comments
So his love of twists extends to how he makes his movies.
I fully expect that at the end of his career he’s going to pull off a mask to reveal he was David Fincher the whole time.
Do NOT put that evil on David Fincher, sir! Shyamalan wishes he was as good as Sir David.
And then he made a movie with all the Unbreakableworld characters…..and it sucked!!!! TWIST!!!!
I generally feel ambivalent about Shyamalan as a person (he comes off as arrogant by putting himself in his own movies, but hey, I don’t know the dude IRL). Reading this quote from him, which I acknowledge removes all other context and mannerisms, I think to myself, “This man… I do not like this man.”
he comes off as arrogant by putting himself in his own moviesDude, they were fucking cameos… It’s not like when Jon Favreau wrote and starred in Chef, a movie where he gets to be/have been in relationships with both Scarlett Johansson AND Sofia Vergara
It’s just not that he’s in them – doesn’t he save the world in Lady in the Water?
Strictly speaking, no. He’s destined to write a book that is largely obscure, but is a key piece of inspiration for someone who does save the world. It’s still grandiose, but it’s not that.
And?
Dude, they were fucking cameos… It’s not like when Jon Favreau wrote and starred in Chef, a movie where he gets to be/have been in relationships with both Scarlett Johansson AND Sofia Vergara
He cast himself as the brilliant writer/philosopher who eventually single-handedly saves the world in Lady in the Water, but is martyred because people don’t understand his genius during his lifetime.The villain, and only character to die, was a movie critic.
Most of his appearances are cameos, but Lady in the Water was undeniably, egregiously arrogant.
*Taika Waititi has entered the chat*
I really wanted to like that movie, and really, really hated it. I’m not sure I’ve gone into one of his movies with an open mind since then.
There’s an excellent video on youtube on the Mr Sunday Movies channel which makes a convincing case for Chef being about the making of Iron Man 2. It completely changes the lens you see that movie through.
Go Jon! lol.
His appearances in 6th Sense and Unbreakable are okay, even though only the first one is a real, unobtrusive cameo (in Unbreakable, he gives himself the role of the doctor who sets up the premise of the movie). You start to see him going past the edge of his limited acting skills with his appearance in Signs, where, even though he only appears once, he’s a key character in the story who needs to do a fair amount of emoting, and he’s just bad. That role should’ve gone to an actor. His appearance in the Village is even worse, somehow, because even though the role is okay for his very modest acting skills, he shows up at the end as The Guy Who Explains the Movie’s Stupid Twist, which is a bad look for the writer/director who created that stupid twist. And there’s no indication in his filmography that it was a self-aware “Yep, this one’s a stinker!” kind of thing.
“Dude, they were fucking cameos…”
Dude, it wasn’t a cameo in Signs or Lady in the Water. He played the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON in both movies, FFS.
And to compare that with an ACTOR who wrote a script for himself? Fuck you, you disingenuous fuck.
Nobody says this shit about Hitchcock or Jon Waters. There’s some serious racial implicit bias at play. As a gay black cisgender male, i’ve had to learn how non-blacks question my leadership skills simply because some folks brains are wired to be confused by a person of color (but in most cases, blacks) displaying authority or leading because they just have never seen it before.
Lots of directors do that, so that doesn’t bug me.But he does come off as far too arrogant and dismissive of his critics and has a reluctance to embrace feedback.
He’s a really solid director and visual storyteller but hi scripts are often garbage. He needs a collaborator to rein him in and tell him to get his head out of his ass.
if i made the sixth sense at 29 i’d be arrogant, too.
The twist is you did.
So the only reason you’re not arrogant is that you’re fucking useless?
COOL!
Didn’t he say something about his marriage once, like “my wife can’t expect me to stay faithful”?Any way I also get a very arrogant vibe from him, but arrogance is kind of a job requirement, and it’s just a personality flaw, not a crime.
I have no idea. I really haven’t read or watched many interviews with him. I know very little about what he’s actually like in-person. I think it’s funny my comment about him coming off as arrogant because he puts himself in his movies seemed to touch a nerve.As for arrogance being a job requirement ehhh, I guess arrogance can manifest itself in different ways. If you presuppose that believing you are capable of directing an entire crew of people is an inherently arrogant belief, then I can see that. But “arrogance is kind of a job requirement” sounds like code for “it’s okay for directors to be assholes” and I ain’t ok with that.
I don’t see how that’s arrogant but whatever.
They were shocked, (SHOCKED I say!) at the easily cuttable mid-credit scene he didn’t tell them about!
If they were shocked because of that, their reaction to the final cut of Glass had to be unstoppable puking.
Disney and Universal agreed to split the film’s ownership (Universal had the North American rights, Disney had the rest of the world as Buena Vista International), so everyone was fine.
I think he means because the ending was terrible.
That was my reaction at least.
Glass had it’s moments but i would have loved an actual unbreakable 2.
I was so annoyed at the “clever” misdirection. “Ha-ha! We are setting this thing up as the setting for the climax, and it’s going to be cool and poignant…” and then “…nah, just kiddin’. Potholes, bay-bee! Purposeful anti-climax! You figure out what it means!”
I hate the ending to that movie so much I had a visceral, like, burst out of my seat reaction. Like, I was enjoying it so much, and it could have just ended with them freed upon the world, and the evil cabal working desperately to catch up (even with the kids!), but no. Had to just kill everyone I cared about in the movie. FUCK YOU.
I love how the big shock is something only corporate suits would care about.
This but unironically, because I think if anyone in the world deserves to be freaked out, it’s corporate suits.
More concerned it’s a Disney movie, what the fuck don’t they own these days
At the end of Glass, I thought, “Yeah, right, as if the whole world is going to believe something just because it’s on YouTube”. Was I really so naive, so recently?
The thing that horrified me was when Shyamalan took a great movie (Unbreakable) and combined it with another great movie (Split) to create one of the biggest turds to ever grace the cinema (Glass).
That quote from him is a lot of fun if you read it like it’s Luis from Ant-Man speaking.
I got a Michael Winslow notification for this?
“if you still haven’t seen Split (which you should because it’s very good)”Anything that uses mental illness/disability as the groundwork for horror is off my list. Shyamalan does *not* have a good track record on this front.
A few years later he terrified them again by showing them Glass. No not the twist ending, the whole long mess of crap that movie was.Seriously does Shyamalan just have a binder full of pictures of Hollywood execs doing bad things? He just keeps getting work.
He’s like any filmmaker. He makes good stuff and bad stuff. Wish Glass was good but Split was pretty great. So was that one movie about the old people and kids. And so was Old.
Lemme call Bruce and say, ‘Hey dude, would you just throw on a sarong and come to Philly for, like, three hours…?”
According to Shyamalan, that scene was not in the script, meaning he sold them the picture without mentioning the ending.
It’s really too bad that didn’t blow up in his face, besides “Glass” being a terrible movie.
The twists keep on coming because Shyamalan’s latest, Old, is currently the number one movie in America. So it’s safe to assume that Universal forgives him for the scare.
So was Black Widow, but we’re supposed to believe that it was bad for the MCU/Disney it only lasted a week.The pattern emerging is the new movie that comes out goes to number 1. Because people want to see movies, and will go to whatever is there.Not a lot of people, but enough people to keep theaters limping along.
Going to put on my pedant hat for a moment: this is not a plot twist (or if it is one, it’s a really bad one). It’s an easter egg. The reveal doesn’t change anything about what we have seen before or even really change anything significant or worthwhile about the context of what we’ve seen. A plot twist is that Mr. Glass has been the bad guy all along. A plot twist is that it was Agatha all along. A plot twist is that the Green Place doesn’t exist anymore. At best, this was a little detail that makes the whole thing a little more fun for people who recognize what they’re seeing – like an EASTER EGG.
The shock twist to Old is that suddenly the A.V. Club’s newer hackneyed writers expect us to reassess a writer/director whose output has never risen above the level of hack.