Click to play videoNew York: At 35, Manoj Night Shyamalan is already regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers in Hollywood, showing up regularly on Premiere magazine's annual list of 100 Most Powerful People in Hollywood.
At last count, Shyamalan came in at number 30 in 2005.
His last four films, eerie thrillers The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village together made more than $2 billion in theatrical and DVD sales, thus consolidating Shyamalan's position as Hollywood's favourite ‘scary movie’ director.
The Sixth Sense
It is to Shyamalan’s credit that he reinvented the genre by abandoning traditional horror movie cliches like blood, chainsaws and ice picks, and replacing them with long silences, fluttering curtains, and of course, the twist ending which has come to be regarded as his trademark touch.
It is unquestionably his stories, his scripts—each of which he's written himself—that win over his fans and draw his actors.
Joaquin Phoenix, who acted in Shyamalan’s movies Signs and The Village, says, “It’s really enjoyable reading his scripts. It’s an experience you would want to have."
Telling stories, incidentally, is something Shyamalan has had lots of practice doing. Raised on a staple diet of Hollywood blockbusters like ET, Jaws, Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies, Shyamalan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera at the age of 10. By the time he was 17, Shyamalan had completed 45 home movies.
Following a course in film studies at New York University, Shyamalan made two self-produced features - Praying with Anger and Wide Awake.
It was in 1999 that life changed forever when The Sixth Sense, his supernatural thriller about a boy who sees dead people became that year's sleeper hit, grossing $662 million.
The film, starring Bruce Willis and newcomer Haley Joel Osment, has gone on to become a cult favourite since, and the film's signature line "I see dead people" is counted as one of the most widely repeated dialogues in movie history.
The same year Shyamalan also wrote the script for a children's film about a talking mouse Stuart Little which went on to become a colossal hit.
Unbreakable
Although the next film he made Unbreakable starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson didn't quite replicate the success of The Sixth Sense, the movie, about an unwilling superhero, is considered by many as Shyamalan's best work.
Signs
In 2002, Shyamalan made Signs with Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, a film about a family which discovers mysterious crop circles appearing on their farm. Despite tepid reviews, the film went on to gross $408 million, making it Shyamalan's biggest hit since The Sixth Sense.
“He really loves what he does, so that he transmits that and really wants to talk about it,” says actor Mel Gibson.
In 2004, Shyamalan hired his biggest cast yet to make The Village, a period film about a close-knit community who have an uncomfortable understanding with the mysterious creatures who inhabit the forests that surround their township.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Adrian Brody, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, the film grossed a less-than-spectacular $255 million worldwide.
"I wanted to do the movie essentially because no other script has got me like that," says actor Adrian Brody.
“It's all come out of him, he's such an amazing story-teller,” says actor Sigourney Weaver, who performed in The Village.
Shyamalan has filmed each of his movies in Philadelphia where he was raised, and where he continues to live. The writer-director has made an appearance in each of his films, thus further sparking off comparisons to the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.
Many, however, feel Shyamalan invites more accurate comparisons to Steven Spielberg, whose films Shyamalan has admitted to being heavily influenced by in his childhood years.
In 2002, Newsweek magazine put Shyamalan on its cover and declared him the next Spielberg. In his trademark humour, Shyamalan responded that he was flattered by the comparison, but was worried that Spielberg might feel insulted but clearly he did not.
The Village
Shortly after, Shyamalan was approached by Spielberg and George Lucas to script the fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series, an offer Shyamalan declined eventually, choosing instead to write his own movies.
In 2004, after completing The Village, Shyamalan announced he would direct Yann Martel's Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi.
It would be an opportunity for him to film in his birthplace, Pondicherry. But only months after making that announcement, he opted out of the project and chose instead to make Lady in the Water.
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