M. Night Shyamalan Joins YouTube and Starts Digging Into His Movie-Making Past
With YouTubers making the jump to Hollywood, M. Night Shyamalan is heading in the opposite direction.
The filmmaker behind The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Split, and Signs has launched his own YouTube channel, giving fans a more personal look at his filmmaking career, memories, and whatever else he decides to share along the way.
For a director who has spent more than 30 years making studio movies, the whole thing is pretty casual. His first upload is simply titled “This is my first youtube video,” and the veteran filmmaker comes across as relaxed and sincere.
Shyamalan seems genuinely interested in using YouTube as a place to connect with people and revisit his career from a different perspective.
“What I hope it is is an opportunity to reflect and get to know each other, deepen the relationship,” he says in the video, while acknowledging that he’s a little “scared” about stepping into this new space. Rather than treating that uncertainty as something negative, he appears excited by it.
“It’s like 30 years of making movies, and I want to undo it a little bit, you know, ignore whatever stigmas are in my head or in anybody’s head. I don’t know what I’m going to show you and what you’re going to show me, but the joy of it is stepping into the unknown.”
Shyamalan launched the channel over the weekend and has pulled in more than 100,000 subscribers. His second video gets even more personal. Titled “Reading my diary from making Signs,” the 16-minute video has Shyamalan opening up the journal he kept while making the 2002 sci-fi thriller.
He reads excerpts and talks through his memories of making Signs, which was in production during the September 11, 2001 attacks. The video also includes footage and photos connected to the film, including shots of a younger Shyamalan on set with Mel Gibson.
It’s an interesting format for a filmmaker with Shyamalan’s history. Rather than producing another retrospective documentary or carefully packaged featurette, he can simply grab an old journal, turn on a camera, and tell stories about movies that fans have been discussing for decades.
There’s plenty for him to dig into, too. He can provide years of stories, production memories, abandoned ideas, creative decisions, and probably a few wonderfully strange anecdotes.
Shyamalan also has another feature film on the way. His next project, Remain, is a collaboration with Nicholas Sparks and is scheduled to arrive next year.
As you know, right now, YouTube horror creators are increasingly moving toward feature filmmaking, with online projects finding paths to theatrical adaptations and major filmmakers taking notice of creators who built audiences on the platform.
Now Shyamalan, a filmmaker who has spent decades making theatrical genre movies, is wandering onto their turf. It’s a weird little reversal.
If Shyamalan keeps the channel this personal and uses it to crack open old journals, revisit his films, talk honestly about his creative process, and share stories we haven’t heard before, this could become a great destination for movie geeks.