M. Night Shyamalan is best known for his huge plot twists, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the director was untouchable. Not even Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese's name attached to a movie could have attracted as much attention.
But that quickly ran its course, and the writer-director's career trajectory took some strange turns with even stranger box-office returns. Interestingly, Shyamalan is seemingly bulletproof, as he has had a surprising amount of failures but always somehow bounces back like they never happened.
The Visit (2015) - $98.4 Million
After a string of critical failures (though still box-office hits), The Visit was a huge return to form for M. Night Shyamalan. As Shyamalan is best known for plot twists and original storytelling, The Visit brought back those beloved trademarks, and it even features some of the most frightening scenes he has ever directed.
Even though the film is far from the director's highest-grossing movie, it was one of his biggest successes in terms of net profit. The 2015 film was made on a shoestring, especially by Shyamalan's standards, as it had a production budget of just $5 million. That's pocket change compared to a movie like The Last Airbender.
The Happening (2008) - $163.4 Million
By 2008, the writing was on the wall that Shyamalan's formula was starting to crack, and The Happening is notorious for its ridiculous narrative and how badly shot it is. In the years since, Shyamalan has tried passing the film off as a satire, even though it has the same overly dramatic tendencies as his other films.
Between Mark Wahlberg being attached to the project, Shyamalan's name still having some weight to it, and the promise of being an epic mystery movie, the film took over $160 million at the box office. Still, negative word of the mouth about the film spread before it could make Unbreakable levels of money.
After Earth (2013) - $243.6 Million
More than anything, After Earth was a vanity project for Will Smith and an attempt to turn his son into a movie star. Regardless of the film's blatant nepotism, it still made a decent amount worldwide.
Unfortunately, despite making almost a quarter of a billion dollars, After Earth is still considered a failure. The 2013 movie had an inflated budget of $130 million, and as the marketing budget tends to be the same cost of production, the film was operating at a significant loss.
Glass (2019) - $247 Million
In an attempt to make his own cinematic universe, Glass is a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split. Despite its polarized reception, enough people were intrigued that it became one of the director's biggest success stories. Glass' success stems from what worked for Shyamalan for his previous two movies, which was making the film with a much lower budget than he's used to.
It's hard to believe that Shyamalan even pulled off the movie with just $20 million, which is impressive in itself. Anybody would think the star power of James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson alone would have cost way more than the movie's budget. The actors were likely offered back end points, which means they'd get a percentage of the movie's gross profit. And if that's the case, it worked out great for everyone, as the left-field superhero movie made 12 times its budget.
Unbreakable (2000) - $248.1 Million
After the phenomenal success that was The Sixth Sense, audiences were waiting to see how Shyamalan would follow up the mystery horror. The result was Unbreakable, which might not have been exactly what audiences wanted, but it was a fascinating take on the superhero genre.
However, as the movie was almost like an introspective and philosophical look into what piques viewers' interest in the genre, that isn't a big-ticket seller. The movie was a huge success, but it still made half of what The Sixth Sense did and had double the budget.
The Village (2004) - $256.6 Million
The Village was Shyamalan's fourth major movie following the formula that he perfected with The Sixth Sense. Just as is the case of all his previous movies, Shyamalan creates a world that seems normal, but there's something that's just a little off about it. And it's soon revealed what's really going on behind the scenes that makes viewers look at the movie completely differently.
The 2004 movie was the first time the big twist didn't completely land with audiences, and many think that it's a great film but ruined by its ending, but it was still able to gross an impressive figure worldwide. But even though the movie's ending might have had a polarizing response, it's still just as much about the journey. The dramatic performances, the vivid colors, and the Oscar-nominated score all helped the movie become one of Shyamalan's most impressive productions.
Split (2016) - $278.4 Million
After The Visit sparked a Shyamalan renaissance, the director quickly followed with Split, a thriller about a man (James McAvoy) with 24 different personalities. With the wrong actor, the movie could have been terrible, but McAvoy is just as responsible for the movie's astounding box office intake as Shyamalan. The actor carries the movie, and he manages to turn what sounds like a schlocky B-movie into something serious.
Another key component in Split's Earth-shattering box office success is the reveal of Bruce Willis in the mid-credits scene, showing that the film is tied to a bigger universe. That got audiences talking almost more than the movie itself. The film had a budget of just $9 million, meaning that it made 30 times its budget, which is almost unheard of, and in that respect, it's the director's biggest success.
The Last Airbender (2010) - $319.7 Million
Just as is the case with so many of the director's films, The Last Airbender might look like it was successful with a figure of $319 million, but it massively underperformed and was hated by both critics and audiences. The film did for Avatar the series what Batman & Robin did for Batman, as it killed a film series that had the potential to be a Harry Potter-sized franchise.
However, though it's easily M. Night Shyamalan's worst movie, the movie's failure didn't still didn't slow him down. For any other director, it could have been critical for their career, so it's something of a feat that Shyamalan is still so successful today.
Signs (2002) - $408.2 Million
After tackling the horror genre with The Sixth Sense, the superhero genre with Unbreakable, Shyamalan was seemingly redefining every genre, and the logical next step was to turn to science fiction. Signs didn't quite redefine the genre as people expected, but audiences still showed up in droves to see it.
Though the final twist is that aliens are allergic to water, which is derivative of The War of the Worlds' ending, Signs is still enormously entertaining and full of terrifying scenes. And though it isn't the most loved movies in his filmography, the aliens are used so sparingly, which makes it easily Shyamalan's most suspenseful work.
The Sixth Sense (1999) - $672.8 Million
If anybody has ever wondered why studios kept green-lighting Shyamalan's movies after so many disasters in the 2000s and 2010s, The Sixth Sense is why. When a fresh-faced writer-director comes along with a completely original screenplay that grosses over $670 million with a budget of just $40 million, he's somebody worth taking a risk on.
The movie established Shyamalan's style, and the movie's final plot twist had audiences talking for months, becoming a phenomenon and breaking so many box office records. The Sixth Sense was the second-highest-grossing movie of 1999, being beaten only by Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and it was one of just a few movies in the top 10 of the year not based on an existing property.