It's been 19 years since M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable, and just as the writer/director was plotting a trilogy including 2016's Split and the upcoming release of Glass, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have been waiting to reprise their roles of David Dunn and Mr. Glass for all this time. I recently spoke with M. Night Shyamalan about what the long, impatient wait was like for him and the film's stars, and he recalled his hilarious run-ins with Samuel L. Jackson over the years. In his words:
I would just see [Samuel L. Jackson] randomly if I was in Los Angeles -- and I don't go to Los Angeles hardly at all. So one time I was driving on the studio lot and his car came, and he rolled down the window and he's like, 'When are we making that sequel motherfucker?' I was like, 'Oh, I'm working on it. I'm working on it, man. I'm working on it, I got to drive, bye.' And then literally, I think another year later I was at a red light in Los Angeles, and his car pulled up again next to me and he goes, 'When we making that sequel motherfucker?' And I'm like, 'I'm working on it, I'm almost there!' And really I hadn't worked on it at all. I was just trying to drive away. So when I finally did call them, they were super, super supportive.
After that, I can imagine M. Night Shyamalan looking over his shoulder every time he found himself in L.A., awaiting another prod from the iconic actor about Glass. This amazing story no question sounds like how Samuel L. Jackson would approach confronting him.
It wasn't just Snakes on a Plane with the iconic "These motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane" line. Pulp Fiction's Jules also famously added comedy to an intense scene with the line "English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?" I'm beginning to think the actor had something to do with crafting these lines and they turned out too good to be censored from these films.
M. Night Shyamalan also told me that when he was working on Unbreakable back in 2000, he told the stars of his bigger plans for three films, but chose to keep the specifics a secret due to the nature of Split.
The psychological thriller starring James McAvoy as a man with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps three teenagers was a secret sequel to Unbreakable. It was not made clear to fans of its connection until the very end, when Bruce Willis' David Dunn shows up and mentions Jackson's "Mr. Glass" character to connect the two together.
The writer/director, who has also crafted the twists in The Sixth Sense and Signs, said Bruce Willis and David Dunn really connected with the "comic book heroes" being explored again in the trilogy closer, Glass. And considering Samuel L. Jackson's exchanges with M. Night Shyamalan over the years, he's been excited for some time to get back in Mr. Glass' wheelchair.
Glass takes place just a couple weeks after the events of Split, with David Dunn attempting to hunt down the criminal introduced in the 2016 film. However, David, Mr. Glass and Kevin Wendell Crumb, plus the latter's "Horde" of identities, find themselves in the same maximum security hospital, and it becomes a game of heroes versus villains. Glass hits theaters on January 18.
