M. Night Shyamalan

Manoj Nelliyattu M. Night Shyamalan ( ; born August 6, 1970) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for making original films with contemporary supernatural plots and twist endings. The cumulative gross of his films exceeds $3.3 billion globally. Shyamalan was born in Mahé, India, and raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania. His early films include Praying with Anger (1992) and Wide Awake (1998) before his breakthrough film The Sixth Sense (1999), which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He then released Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002) and The Village (2004). Following a period of setbacks which include several poorly received films like Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010), and After Earth (2013), he found a career resurgence with the films The Visit (2015), Split (2016), Glass (2019), Old (2021), and Knock at the Cabin (2023). Shyamalan is also one of the executive producers and occasional director of the 20th Television science fiction series Wayward Pines (2015–2016) and the Apple TV+ psychological horror series Servant (2019–2023), for which he also serves as showrunner. Early life Shyamalan was born in Mahé, India to ethnic Indian parents in a town in the Union Territory of Pondicherry. His father, Dr. Nelliyattu C. Shyamalan, is a Malayali neurologist from Mahé and a JIPMER graduate; his mother, Dr. Jayalakshmi, a Tamil, is an OB-GYN.