M. Night Shyamalan Self-Funded His Last Three Films Including The $20 Million Budget For GLASS

After a string of bad movies, the Hollywood studios didn’t want to touch anything from director M. Night Shyamalan. I don’t blame them! Hell, Shyamalan lost me as a fan with The Village. It wasn’t until The Visit was released that he started to win me back over.

Turns out, to get The Visit made, he had to put up his own money. According to Forbes, the filmmaker took a $5 million loan on his 125-acre Pennsylvania estate to finance. That movie earned $98.5 million at the box office. He took $9 million from that and put it into Split. That movie made $278.5 million. He took some of his earnings from that as well as further collateral from his property to put up the $20 million budget for Glass.

As you know, Glass is doing pretty well at the Box Office, so it was a great investment on his part. Obviously he had to find a distributor for his films and they take a good amount of money off the top. But, because he did fund the movie himself, he didn’t have any of studios telling him what he could and couldn’t do. He had full creative freedom to tell his stories.

I’ve gotta say, I respect Shyamalan even more as a filmmaker. The fact that he used his own money to make these movies and take the gamble to keep doing what he loves regardless of the backlash he was getting from the fans and the studios, is admirable.

I’m happy that he followed through with his plans because it all led to the long awaited sequel to Unbreakable, which I thought was a fantastic conclusion to his story.