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M. Night Shyamalan Movies

M.Night Shyamalan's movie career got off to a great start.
M.Night Shyamalan’s movie career got off to a great start.

Want to know the best M. Night Shyamalan movies?  How about the worst M. Night Shyamalan movies?  Curious about M. Night Shyamalan’s box office grosses or which M. Night Shyamalan movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which M. Night Shyamalan movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

This page was originally part of a Shyamalan, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino movie page.  Part of that original page was this little skit I wrote that looked at all three of their movie careers.  I figured even though I was giving each director his own page that I would still include the skit.

Christopher, Quentin and M.Night are at a bar drinking Shiner Bock beers, smoking Red Apple cigarettes and arguing about who will be the next Spielberg.

Quentin: It has to be me, I have been directing movies for over 20 years, my Pulp Fiction is a classic, people love my Kill Bill movies, Reservoir Dogs put independent movies on the map while Inglourious Basterds was a box office hit and picked up 8 Oscar® nominations. And my latest movie, Django Unchained, was my biggest box office hit of my career.

M. Night: You’ve been around the longest but you have only made 10 movies in 25 years and Four Rooms, Jackie Brown, Death Proof and The Hateful Eight died at the box office…that is not a good percentage.

Christopher: You got no room to talk M., you have not had a box office success since The Village, and most people have hated every movie you have made since Signs….talk about some movies with horrible reviews….you got The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening , The Last Airbender and After Earth all lined up in a row.

M. Night: Well Mr. Nolan, at least Quentin and I have an Oscar® nomination for Best Director in our resume. And I know you remember how I was considered to be the next Spielberg after the success of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. I think you are forgetting The Last Airbender earned over $300 million in worldwide box office and was the 21st biggest hit of the year…plus After Earth did pretty well overseas.

Quentin: I actually have two Best Director Oscar® nominations…but who is counting. Sorry to have to tell you M. Night, but I do not think anybody has compared you to Spielberg in a very longtime….and as for The Last Airbender, true it made some money but I think it was the worst reviewed movie in the last 20 years….and I think the less said about After Earth the better.

Christopher: Speaking of box office hits…do you know my last four movies have a worldwide box office over 3 billion dollars? That includes The Dark Knight that crossed a billion at the box office, Inception which earned over $800 million and The Dark Knight Rises which also crossed the one billion mark.  My latest blockbuster, Interstellar,  picked up $672 million.  Plus my upcoming, Dunkirk, will be my Saving Private Ryan which is yet another reason I now am considered the next Spielberg….sorry I took that title away from you M. Night.

M. Night: Maybe the last ten years have been a little rough for my movies, but I am on the road back…first The Visit was well received and now Split is on the way to being one of my biggest hits.

Quentin: Sorry to interrupt you M.Night, I agree Split was a success for you…hopefully you won’t follow it up with another Lady in the Water. As for you Chris, I loved Memento, The Prestige, and Insomnia but I think the Batman movies are overrated and I still do not understand your dream inside a dream inside a dream movie. And don’t even get me started on the ending of Interstellar….

Christopher: Hey I am sorry if you are not smart enough to figure out Inception, but I will try and explain it for you and don’t worry I will go real slow so maybe you will finally understand.

Quentin: (Reaches into his bag and slams two Oscars® down on the table) I am smart enough to know that this proves I am the best director in this group!

Christopher: You got those Oscars® for the screenplays for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained, not for directing it. I’ll show you an award for directing…here is my COFCA (Central Ohio Film Critics Association) award for Best Director for Inception.

M. Night: I did not know we were supposed to bring our directing awards tonight.

Quentin: Yeah you could have brought either one of your Razzie awards as worst director for either The Happening or The Last Airbender.

At this point M.Night swipes the Oscar® and the COFCA off the table and a huge fight breaks out among the three directors. While the fight continues an older gentlemen who had been listening to the conversation grabs his stuff, pays his bill and starts to leave the bar.

Older gentleman to bartender: (Shaking his head in dismay) I just do not understand these younger directors…they have so much more to learn.

Bartender: I agree with you 100%….have a great night Mr. Spielberg.

M. Night Shyamalan’s IMDb page shows 14 directing credits from 1992-2017. This page will rank 11 M. Night Shyamalan movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  His television shows and straight to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.

Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis in 1999's The Sixth Sense
Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis in 1999’s The Sixth Sense

M. Night Shyamalan Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort M. Night Shyamalan movies co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort M. Night Shyamalan movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort M. Night Shyamalan movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort M. Night Shyamalan movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each M. Night Shyamalan movie received.
  • Sort M. Night Shyamalan movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
CreditRank Movie (Year) UMR Co-Star Links Review % Oscar Nom / Win S UMR Score
CreditRank Movie (Year) UMR Co-Star Links Actual B.O. Domestic (mil) Adj. B.O. Domestic (mil) Adj. B.O. Worldwide (mil) B.O. Rank by Year Review % Oscar Nom / Win S UMR Score
1 The Sixth Sense (1999)
AA Best Picture Nom
AA Best Director Nom
Bruce Willis &
Haley Joel Osment
291.50 676.9 1,557.7 2 86 06 / 00 99.2
2 Split (2016) James McAvoy &
Bruce Willis
138.10 187.6 378.0 21 75 00 / 00 95.2
3 Unbreakable (2000) Bruce Willis &
Samuel L. Jackson
95.00 207.1 540.9 23 72 00 / 00 95.0
4 Signs (2002) Mel Gibson 228.00 461.8 827.1 6 69 00 / 00 94.7
5 The Village (2004) William Hurt &
Sigourney Weaver
114.20 216.1 485.7 20 52 01 / 00 89.4
6 Glass (2019) Bruce Willis &
Samuel L. Jackson
110.80 142.1 316.0 25 68 00 / 00 88.1
7 The Visit (2015) Olivia DeJonge 65.20 90.9 137.2 44 63 00 / 00 78.1
8 The Last Airbender (2010) Mark Wahlberg &
Zooey Deschanel
131.80 196.2 476.1 19 24 00 / 00 73.8
9 Knock At The Cabin (2023) Dave Bautista 35.10 38.2 58.0 59 66 00 / 00 63.8
10 Old (2021) Rufus Sewell 48.20 55.7 104.1 27 58 00 / 00 61.1
11 Trap (2024) Josh Hartnett 38.50 38.5 71.7 42 59 00 / 00 53.9
12 The Happening (2008) Mark Wahlberg 64.50 105.6 267.4 49 36 00 / 00 48.1
13 Lady in the Water (2006) Paul Giamatti &
Bryce Dallas Howard
42.30 75.5 130.0 70 40 00 / 00 38.7
14 After Earth (2013) Will Smith 60.50 87.5 352.4 59 32 00 / 00 28.8
15 Wide Awake (1998) Denis Leary 0.30 0.7 0.7 221 50 00 / 00 13.4

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above M. Night Shyamalan Table

  1. Five M. Night Shyamalan movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 45.45% of his movies listed.  The Sixth Sense (1999) is his biggest hit.
  2. An average M. Night Shyamalan movie earned $146.00 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  5 of M. Night Shyamalan movies are rated as good movies…or 45.45% of his movies.  The Sixth Sense (1999) is his highest rated movie while The Last Airbender (2010) is his lowest rated movie.
  4. Two M. Night Shyamalan movies have been nominated for at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…or 18.18 of his movies
  5. Zero M. Night Shyamalan movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of his movies.
  6. An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00.  6 M. Night Shyamalan movies scored higher that average….or 54.54% of his movies. The Sixth Sense (1999) got the the highest UMR Score while Wide Awake (1998) got the lowest UMR Score.
Mel Gibson in 2002's Signs
Mel Gibson in 2002’s Signs

Check out M. Night Shyamalan‘ career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. 

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

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56 thoughts on “M. Night Shyamalan Movies”

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Older comments
  1. SteinHoF16 says:
    January 23, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    Funny stuff here. Nice job of writing the act. As for MNS seems he wasted some prime years making some really bad movies.

    Reply
    1. SteinHoF16 says:
      January 23, 2017 at 3:08 pm

      Brain fart. This is SteinHOF. Not you in case you could not figure it out. I went from Anonymous to Cogerson maybe I should pay better attention.

      Reply
      1. Cogerson says:
        January 24, 2017 at 12:22 am

        Hey SteinHOF….it has been fixed.

        Reply
    2. Cogerson says:
      January 24, 2017 at 12:20 am

      Well thank you Cogerson…..lol. At first this reallly really confused me. I guess the Cogerson name was on your brain. I will fix this error….thanks for the nice words.

      Reply
  2. Helakoski says:
    January 22, 2017 at 10:26 pm

    Love the skit at the beginning. Sounds like a good SNL skit. I am impressed. Split is off to a good start for sure.

    Reply
    1. Cogerson says:
      January 22, 2017 at 11:24 pm

      Thank you for the kind words, Helakoski. I had fun doing this page….and over the years I have had to update the page…..I like “a good SNL skit”…that made me smile….thanks for that. I agree Split is indeed off to a good start…I did a double take when I saw it grossed over $40 million this weekend. Good stuff. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Chris says:
    January 22, 2017 at 7:32 pm

    Hi

    Glad to see he’s back to form with Split. He’s had a few duds the last few years but that’s the problem with starting so high, People’s expectations are raised, you’re being pronounced as the new Spielberg, you have a flop and then suddenly you’re not… Crazy business!
    Remember Spielberg had a big flop in the 70’s, 1941. I wonder what happened after that…
    I’ve seen a few of his films and I really like The Village. So who knows what the future holds.

    Reply
    1. Cogerson says:
      January 23, 2017 at 12:46 am

      Hey Chris….I was stunned when I saw how well Split did….a $40 million opening weekend…..completely destroyed Vin Diesel’s weekend…..the twist is generating some serious heat for the movie……I was successfully avoiding the twist….until an e-mail from Steve ended that…..but I love the twist so much….I am now ready to go see it.

      Yep Spielberg had 1941….but it was sandwiched between Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark….while M.Night….fell off the cliff after Signs…..The Village opened huge….then the mass Exodus started…..and it took over ten years for him to recover. I thought The Village was decent….but not one of my favorite M.Night movies for sure.

      Good comment….:)

      Reply
      1. Steve 'The Spoiler' Lensman says:
        January 23, 2017 at 11:51 am

        Hey Bruce, you mean I did you a favor by blurting out the twist in Split? I feel better already. All I did was mention a name and now you definitely want to see the movie. My job done than. 🙂

        Reply
        1. Cogerson says:
          January 24, 2017 at 12:03 am

          Yep…Steve…you did a good job….things have been rough for that “name”…so I am glad to see something positive around that “name”.

          Reply
  4. Steve Lensman says:
    May 17, 2015 at 1:01 pm

    Hey Bruce, disaster after disaster for M.Night? I wasn’t expecting that. M.Night peaked with his first big movie, downhill all the way.

    Reply
    1. Cogerson says:
      May 17, 2015 at 1:02 pm

      Hey Steve…M. Night’s fall has been quick and painful…I think it began to unravel with Lady in the Water….which was a bedtime story he made for the his kids….why he thought it would be something for the rest of the world I do not know….but his star has never been the same. Thanks for the re-visit.

      Reply

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