Note this is a discussion purely about his ability to fill the theatres not about the quality of his films (which I haven’t seen btw)
The criteria I am using is US box-office figures over the last three movies of a director assuming they were made in the last five years ie. 1998-2002.
Shyamalan’s last three movies Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs have grossed about 500 million dollars and will probably end up with a total of 600 by the time Signs is done.
By contrast Spielberg’s last three, Saving Private Ryan, AI and Minority Report have grossed about 424 million dollars.
Of course George Lucas with his two Star Wars movies beats both of them but I am not counting him because those movies are hits because of the Star Wars universe which Lucas created 25 years ago, rather than his directorial abilities now. I doubt Lucas could make a non-Star Wars movie which would gross more than 200 million and I suspect any competent director would have had just as much success with the two Star Wars films.
If you go back one year to 1997, of course Cameron with Titanic grossed 600 million with one movie but since he hasn’t had a hit since then I don’t think he counts as someone having current box-office success.
Is there any other director out there who matches Shyamalan in terms of current box office appeal? In any event he has had a remarkable commercial run considering he is only 32 and was unknown three years ago.
This is a list of all-time top-grossing US movies. You can also find the box-office figures for less successful movies by going to the individual movie pages.
Hmmm . . . Michael Bay is (Bog help us all) pretty close. He’s only directed two movies in your timeframe, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, but just those two grossed $400,118,037 in the U.S. If you go back to his last film before that, The Rock in 1996, it pushes his gross up to $534,187,548.
John Lasseter of Pixar, with A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, has grossed $408,691,962. Not too shabby for two animated movies.
Mr. Whitebread himself, Chris Columbus, is a contender as well. Two of his last three grossed less than a hundred million dollars each, but he got handed a little gift called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which pushed him up over $466 million.
Michael Bay would seem to be the closest to Shyamalan. Though even if you add in the Rock, Shyamalan will probably beat him in terms of the 3-movie total by either this weekend or the next.
I thought of John Lasseter but both those movies seem to be collaborative efforts as far as direction is concerned so I am not sure whether it’s correct to count Lasseter per se
as a big box-office success.
I would exclude Columbus for the same reasons as Lucas, clearly it is Harry Potter that is drawing in the viewers. The same goes for Jackson (and LOTR) who will easily beat Shymalan in terms of three-movie total by next year (he may beat him with the second instalment alone).
I’m pretty sure that the last three films Peter Jackson made would beat out Shyamalan.
I’m not sure how well The Gift and For the Love of the Game did, but unless they tanked very badly, I’d guess that Sam Raimi is in the same league as M. Night.
Yeah Raimi will be right up there after the next SpiderMan movie. But I think Spiderman belongs in the category of Star Wars, Harry Potter and LOTR where the franchise probably deserves a larger portion of the credit comapred to the director (even if some of those movies are well-directed).
What makes Shymalan really impressive is his ability to make hundreds of millions from his own original scripts which are not based on priorly famous franchises.
Shymalan is really the only “name” director of any mentioned so far (Outside of Spielberg). You don’t see trailers with the phrases “A new superhero movie by Sam Raimi”, “Michael Bay presents,” or “From the mind of Peter Jackson,” like you did for Signs (“A new thriller from M. Night Shymalan,” I think).
Why are you excluding Lucas? Didn’t he, like create Star Wars out of his head? The others adapted other people’s works.
Sam Raimi is the real deal. You will deservedly hear his name a lot more often. It is a testament to his directing skills that people talk positively about everything else about what he presents but his direction. He puts the production down so smoothly, it is as if he is not there. He definitely not as heavy-handed as Spielberg.
“Why are you excluding Lucas? Didn’t he, like create Star Wars out of his head?”
True but my point was that the Star Wars universe was created by the Lucas of the late 70’s/ early 80’s. It’s the popularity of that universe which accounts for the success of the two recent movies so those movies aren’t necessarily a good indication of the current box-office appeal of Lucas as director but a legacy of past success.
IMO any competent director would have made just as much money with Phanton Menace and Clones and ,like I said, I doubt Lucas could make much money outside of Star Wars today.
