Comprehensive information and links about M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan , on August 6, 1970 in Pondicherry, India, is best known as a writer, director, and producer of American films. His biggest hit came in 1999 with the critically-acclaimed

Early Life and Family

Shyamalan was raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia, after his parents, both of whom are physicians, emigrated to the United States. He attended a private Catholic school in Philadelphia, and then he attended New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. While at NYU, he contrived his new middle name, "Night."

In 1993, Shyamalan married his high school sweetheart, Bhavna. They have two daughters.

the story of a boy grieving for his dead grandfather. The film featured Rosie O'Donnell and Camryn Manheim, but it was a commercial failure. In 1998, Shyamalan also wrote the screenplay for , despite the high price of USD$2 million and the stipulation that Shyamalan could direct the film. Disney later stripped Vogel of the title of President of Walt Disney Pictures, and Vogel left the company. Walt Disney Pictures, apparently in a show of little confidence in the film, sold the profits to Spyglass Entertainment, and kept only a 12.5 percent distribution fee for itself.

The film had a $55 million budget, and it went on to earn over $600 million at box offices worldwide. It is one of the twenty-five most commercially successful films of all time.

went on to garner six Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Haley Joel Osment, Best Supporting Actress for Toni Collette, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay.

Style

Hallmarks of Shyamalan's films include final-act plot twists, depictions of ordinary people encountering and dealing with the paranormal or extraordinary, as well as cameo appearances by Shyamalan himself in each of the films. His movies are also noted for the sharp screenplays, their effective, often subtle musical scores from composer James Newton Howard and highly tense and suspenseful sequences. The movie , which tells about a boy's interaction with spirits, hardly used computer animation or a loud background score. On each of Shyamalan's DVDs is also a short home movie made when he was a youngster, which are often as humorous as they are intriguing.

, aired on the Sci Fi Channel, claimed 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 has had experiences of communicating with spirits. The Sci Fi Channel also claimed that Shyamalan had grown angry when he had discovered that the documentary would reveal certain personal secrets, and had therefore withdrawn from participating. The Sci Fi Channel later admitted that both the "documentary" itself and Shyamalan's objections to it were part of a guerrilla marketing hoax, perpetrated with Shyamalan's direct artistic participation, to generate pre-release publicity buzz for