Bruce Willis Honored by M. Night Shyamalan in Sixth Sense BTS Story

A heartwarming behind-the-scenes tale is starring infamous Hollywood actor and frequent collaborator Bruce Willis on the set of The Sixth Sense, according to acclaimed filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. The legendary 1999 horror was the actor-director team’s debut collaboration; they have since worked together on Unbreakable and Glass. Willis, unfortunately, received an aphasia diagnosis, a disorder that impairs verbal cognition, and terminated his acting career in March 2022.

Jake’s Takes quizzed him about his work with Willis and his legacy as an actor during a press event for the impending final season of Shyamalan’s critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series Servant. Willis compared The Sixth Sense to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, arguably one of the greatest movies ever made and featuring one of his most well-known roles. When Shyamalan heard this, he immediately showered the veteran with praise and recalled the enormous compliment he had previously received from Willis. The complete quote from Shyamalan, which has been alter for readability, is provided below:

The Relationship Between Bruce Willis and M. Night Shyamalan’s Collaborations

Throughout their careers, Willis and Shyamalan worked on three movies together, but their first one is likely the most memorable. The Sixth Sense has a fantastic twist ending that is recognized as one of the best and is generally cited as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Willis stars as Malcolm Crowe, a problematic child psychotherapist, alongside Haley Joel Osment, a young actor who portrays Cole Sear, a person with a reputation for connecting with the dead. The film was hailed as Shyamalan’s masterpiece, nominated for six Oscars, and star Bruce Willis in one of his greatest performances. The praise inspired the pair to collaborate again the following year.

The first installment of Shyamalan’s sole trilogy to date—the second wouldn’t be out for another 16 years—is Unbreakable. Once more, taking the lead, Willis plays David Dunn, the lone survivor of a catastrophic train accident. The movie, where Willis co-stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction, is modele after comic books and presents him as a “superhero” whose bones are indestructible. Unbreakable might be regard as one of the founding figures in early superhero movies as it was creat long before the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and produce just a handful of comic book movies in the 20th century. It has another ingenious twist ending that grounds abilities in a way that few films subsequently have managed.

The third and last installment in the Unbreakable trilogy, Glass, connected the 2000 film and the 2016 movie Split, in which James McAvoy played a character with a dissociative identity disorder. Willis returned to the role of Dunn in his second appearance as a superhero, even though Glass bears little connection to the MCU or any other recent superhero movies. The casts of Split and Unbreakable were merge in Shyamalan’s third and final comic book installment, which was release the same year as Avengers: Endgame. It was another enjoyable collaboration with Willis and many other top-notch actors, although having a very different theme than The Sixth Sense.