It was a slow January at the box office, but the biggest film of 2019 so far is M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass. The trilogy-capper has enjoyed three straight weekends atop the box office and this past weekend, crossed over $200 million worldwide. To celebrate this milestone, M. Night Shyamalan took to social media to share his feelings about Glass’s success. Take a look:
With the success of Glass, M. Night Shyamalan is clearly feeling both appreciative and reflective on the arc of his career. He notes that his first two films only had limited theatrical runs in a few theaters, which were cut even shorter when they failed to perform. Those two films were Praying with Anger and Wide Awake, and preceded the director’s third film The Sixth Sense. That thriller proved the third time to be the charm, revealing him to the world and still standing today as his biggest success.
Coming from the failures of his first two films to having another film in his long career cross the $200 million worldwide threshold is affirming, and M. Night Shyamalan says in his tweet that it's "beyond a dream come true." The director went through struggles, and can now look back on how far he has come and the success his career has been. And that must make Glass’s box office performance all the more enjoyable.
Regardless of your feelings about Glass, you’ve got to feel happy for the guy. And the success of the film is even more impressive and probably more rewarding for him because he produced Glass on his own dime. M. Night Shyamalan’s career resurgence has not been backed by studio money or with executives exerting their influence over his vision; he’s done it on his own.
M. Night Shyamalan put up his own money, taking out a loan against his estate to make The Visit and then after that film succeeded, he put together money to make Split. With Glass he used $20 million of his own money to create the film he wanted to make. He bet on himself, and Glass’s $200 million worldwide box office haul shows that bet paid off handsomely.
The success of Glass also is a testament to the resonance of his film with audiences. M. Night Shyamalan also thanked fans for embracing his vision and believes that Glass is proof that audiences are willing to accept and connect with new and dark voices, even if the system isn’t geared towards promoting them.
And it is true that audiences connected with Glass, at least more so than critics. The film’s financial success is evidence of that and certainly makes you wonder if M. Night Shyamalan will return to this world in the future. He has seemingly ruled out a Glass sequel but he still has a long career ahead of him so who knows what could happen?
Glass is now playing. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule for all the biggest movies heading to theaters the rest of the year and stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all your movie news.
