Making of Lady in the Water

New York: Shyamalan's latest film Lady in the Water began as an impromptu bedtime story he invented for his two young daughters. He has said there was something at the heart of this story that made him want to tell it every night and to keep it going.

After the story finally ended, his daughters kept talking about it, and about what might have happened to the characters. Shyamalan noticed that his story resonated with his family in an unusual fashion. That's when the writer-director decided there may be potential in it for a feature film.

A fantasy about a building superintendent who finds a mysterious young woman living in the passageways beneath the building swimming pool, Shyamalan's story revealed that the woman is actually a narf, a nymph-like character from an epic bedtime story who's being stalked by vicious wolf-like creatures called scrunts.

These scrunts are determined to prevent her from making the journey back from the human world to her world. Shyamalan's story also revealed that the destines of the fellow tenants residing in that building complex are linked directly to the narf's and they must put their lives to great risk to help her.

Shyamalan sent his script of Lady in the Water to Disney, the studio that had been his creative home for more than six years. But top Disney execs showed no faith in the project, prompting the filmmaker to severe ties with the studio and take the movie elsewhere.

Working on a budget of $70 million, Shyamalan made Lady in the Water for Warner Bros and cast Sideways star Paul Giamatti in the role of the building superintendent. For the central role of the narf, Shyamalan cast his leading lady from The Village, Bryce Dallas Howard.

Giving himself his biggest role yet since his debut feature Praying with Anger, Shyamalan cast himself as a struggling author in Lady in the Water opposite India-born actress Sarita Choudhury who plays his sister.

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Unlike his previous movies, which shot him to instant fame, Lady in the Water is not a typical Shyamalan thriller. For one, the film doesn't have a twist ending – an element in his pictures that fans have come to expect and enjoy. But the film's actors are hopeful that this won't hurt the film's prospects.

Actor Paul Giamatti says, “He is sort of saying that everybody has to let go of that at some point of time and start to believe in things. Now that’s kind of an intense idea and an intense thing to ask people to do. But I think it can be awarding thing for people to do and he is good at getting people to buy this end of craziness.”

“Any great films have revelations and I do believe that film has several revelations. But no twist,” says actor Bryce Dallas Howard.

In many ways, Shyamalan has insisted, making Lady in the Water was like going back to his independent roots. The filmmaker has attempted to create a brand new mythology that encourages people to believe in a world of possibilities beyond those one can see or fully comprehend.

So confident is Shyamalan that he's made the right choice, that he's trashed those Disney execs who scoffed at his pet project, in a new book titled The Man Who Heard Voices: Or How M Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.

Early reviews of Lady in the Water have been disappointing, but so were those for Signs and The Village. In Shyamalan's career, critics' reviews have had little or no impact on the box-office performance of his movies. He is probably hoping right now that it works out the same way for Lady in the Water.