M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN'S GLASS: Full Production Notes

Full Production Notes For M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN'S GLASS

UNIVERSAL PICTURES PRESENTS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH PERFECT WORLD PICTURES

A BLINDING EDGE PICTURES/BLUMHOUSE PRODUCTION

AN M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN FILM

JAMES MCAVOY

BRUCE WILLIS

ANYA TAYLOR-JOY

WITH SARAH PAULSON

AND SAMUEL L. JACKSON

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS

STEVEN SCHNEIDER

GARY BARBER

ROGER BIRNBAUM

KEVIN FRAKES

PRODUCED BY

MARC BIENSTOCK

ASHWIN RAJAN

PRODUCED BY

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN

JASON BLUM

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN

PRODUCTION INFORMATON

M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN weaves together the unforgettable narratives of two of his visionary original films—2000’s Unbreakable and 2016’s Split—in one explosive, all-new comic-book thriller: Glass.

From Unbreakable, BRUCE WILLIS returns as David Dunn as does SAMUEL L. JACKSON as Elijah Price, known also by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from Split are JAMES MCAVOY, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within him, and ANYA TAYLOR-JOY as Casey Cooke, the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast.

Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.

Joining the all-star cast are Unbreakable’s SPENCER TREAT CLARK and CHARLAYNE WOODARD, who reprise their roles as Dunn’s son and Price’s mother, as well as Emmy and Golden Globe winner SARAH PAULSON (American Crime Story: The O. J. Simpson Story, American Horror Story series).

The film’s director of photography is MICHAEL GIOULAKIS (Split), the production designer is CHRIS TRUJILLO (Netflix’s Stranger Things), and the costume designer is PACO DELGADO (Split, Les Misérables). Glass is edited by LUKE CIARROCCHI (Split) and BLU MURRAY (Sully). The composer is WEST DYLAN THORDSON (Split).

This riveting culmination of Shyamalan’s worldwide blockbusters is produced by Shyamalan and Blumhouse Production’s JASON BLUM, who also produced the writer-director’s previous two films for Universal. They produce again with ASHWIN RAJAN and MARC BIENSTOCK, and STEVEN SCHNEIDER executive produces. GARY BARBER, ROGER BIRNBAUM and KEVIN FRAKES also serve as executive producers.

A Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse production, Glass will be released by Universal Pictures in North America on January 18, 2019, and by Buena Vista International abroad.

THE BACKSTORY

Evolution of a Trilogy

From Unbreakable to Glass

Long before he started making his 2016 smash, Split, M. Night Shyamalan intended for it to be far more than just an electrifying stand-alone film. The terrifying, breakneck thriller centers on Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a man with dissociative identity disorder whose more sinister personalities (collectively known as The Horde) kidnap three teenage girls. The plan is to feed the “impure” girls to another of Crumb’s personalities, a superhuman creature known as The Beast. The final girl, Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) is spared because The Beast sees scars covering Casey’s body, markers of childhood abuse. Because Casey, unlike the other girls, has suffered, her heart is pure. “Rejoice,” The Beast tells her. “The broken are the more evolved.”

It was a riveting and powerful story on its own merits, but what no one outside of Shyamalan’s inner circle knew, of course, was that the master filmmaker also planned for Split to exist in the same narrative universe of an iconic film he had made 16 years earlier - 2000’s Unbreakable – and that Split would form the connective tissue of the most unprecedented and unexpected trilogy in film history.

Unbreakable, about a security guard named David Dunn (Bruce Willis) who becomes the sole survivor of a train wreck, posed the question of what would happen if superheroes were real. At the insistence of a mysterious, rare-comic-book collector named Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who suffers from a medical condition that makes his bones shatter on the slightest impact, Dunn comes to believe that he has super strength and is impervious to injury or illness. Not only that, he has the ability to see or sense the evil deeds of others simply by touching them. As Dunn accepts this new reality and begins to exercise his powers, he becomes a vigilante warrior, saving the innocent and punishing the criminal. He finds his true calling. In the film’s final scene, Dunn goes to thank Price, but in a moment of physical contact between the two men, Dunn sees, to his horror, that Price has caused the train wreck that Dunn survived, and has committed other acts of terrorism that have killed hundreds, all in an attempt to find Dunn. Why? Because if Dunn is unbreakable and a superhero, and Price is Dunn’s opposite, then Price, at last, knows for certain who he himself is: a supervillain, Mr. Glass.

In addition to its critical and commercial success, Unbreakable would prove to be an incisive, prescient, and almost-eerie cultural bellwether. Made years before the explosion of Marvel and DC superhero movies that dominate the industry today, the film became, and remains, a lodestar for comic-book fans worldwide. More than a decade after its release, Shyamalan was still routinely asked by reporters and fans if he ever planned to make a sequel. He always demurred. And, in typical Shyamalan fashion, when he finally did decide to do it, he did it in a way that no one saw coming.

The final scene of Split takes place in a Philadelphia diner, where patrons can be seen watching a news report that one of the kidnapped girls has survived but that Crumb is still at large. As the news report continues, we see a man at the counter in profile, and as he turns, we realize that it is David Dunn (Willis). Longtime Shyamalan fans lost their minds, speculating on what the scene might mean. Younger fans were left scratching their heads, at first. “Some of the teenagers were like, ‘Who’s that old guy in the diner?’” Shyamalan says, laughing. “But then they go and watch Unbreakable, and they fall in love with the tonalities of where it all started.”

Shyamalan’s vision was to create a trilogy unlike any before. “I want each film be a stand-alone in its power, in its language, in its originality,” he says. And that the artistic whole of the trilogy exceeds the sum of its parts. “The three films honor each other as brothers and sisters,” he says. “That would be the hope.” Adds producer Ashwin Rajan, “It’s two worlds, two previous films, colliding. Creatively, it’s about tying those two worlds together seamlessly, both from a production standpoint and on a story level, to execute Night’s vision.”

Where Unbreakable examined a man whose modest self-image had blinded him to his own true power, and Split explored the lethal power of a monster created by a mind wounded by trauma, Glass delves into the root of identity itself: whether we are objectively who we are or whether our minds can shape and ultimately determine our physical realities. If you believe you’re a superhero, are you one, even if your belief is a delusion? “I’ve been interested in psychology, and the psychology of therapy, since college, so those themes have been very organic,” Shyamalan says. “Over time, the research and the story start feeding each other. With Split, I’d be reading about dissociative identity disorder, and then I’d think, ‘Oh, that could be a great moment.’ Unbreakable started the same way. I had snapped both of my ACLs in my knees from playing basketball and I had spent a lot of time in rehab and physical therapy. That informed the whole of Unbreakable.”

At the beginning of Glass, we discover that in the 16 years since Unbreakable, David Dunn has become a legitimate vigilante hero, known as The Overseer, protecting the citizens of Philadelphia full time with the help of his now-adult son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark). But Dunn is a controversial figure and is wanted by police. His success depends on maintaining his anonymity and staying one step ahead of the law. Crumb’s sinister personalities, The Horde, meanwhile, have kidnapped four more teenage girls to feed to The Beast. Police have been unable to find them. Dunn needs to find Crumb, and fast.

When he does, the epic battle will result in both Dunn and Crumb being captured and detained at Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Research Hospital under the forced care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who specializes in a specific type of delusion of grandeur: people who believe they are comic-book characters. Notably, she has a third patient suffering from the same alleged affliction, a man who has been housed at Raven Hill for 16 years: Elijah Price. Price, now permanently in a wheelchair and heavily sedated, seems a shell of his former self.

As the three men grapple with their situation, they will be aided from the outside in various ways by Dunn’s son, Joseph, Price’s mother (Charlayne Woodard) and Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy), who has formed a singular, almost spiritual bond with Crumb, her former captor.

For Shyamalan, the joining together of these characters, from these two films 16 years apart, surprised him in unexpected ways. “I’ve never done anything like this,” he says. “So it was very nostalgic for me. It represented a large section of my career, so I felt a great sense of emotion, and a great sense of urgency to do right by it,” he says. “People are excited to see this movie because of their connection to one or both of the two movies, and that’s a strange relationship to the audience I’ve never had before.” Indeed, all of his films are original creations. He’s never even made a sequel. “Usually people are coming to a movie of mine because I’m telling a story that seems intriguing to them and that they don’t know much about. But this time, the audience has ownership. They have expectations. That’s a really different process, and one I took seriously.”

As a bonus, Shyamalan was able to incorporate never-before-seen footage from Unbreakable into Glass for scenes representing David Dunn or Joseph’s memories. “It was amazing, because these scenes that we cut out of Unbreakable have always been in my head, and I was thinking these scenes could work into the movie if I wrote them in the right way,” he says. “We were really excited to put them in the movie, and the audience can’t believe what they’re looking at. In one scene there’s a boy, and then you see him at 25 years old in the very next scene. There’s no CGI. That’s really both of them. And it’s the same thing with Bruce Willis. To see someone age eighteen years right in front of you is a powerful thing.”

The story of Glass, producer Rajan says, “just feels epic. There’s a poignancy and an inspiration to it.” And the scale of the film, says fellow producer Marc Bienstock, is much larger. “Split was more contained, with the girls held captive in just a few rooms, and Glass is more expansive,” Bienstock says. “The scope is bigger, and there’s considerably more action.”

Executive producer Steven Schneider says the result is a film unlike any ever made. “Every film Night makes is unique, and in this particular case, it’s combining different genres into a wholly distinctive narrative,” Schneider says. “It’s something nobody has seen before. And the scope of it is massive. The gloves are off, and the stakes are very high, both for the characters as individuals and for the ultimate implications for society.”

It’s also a testament to the power of Shyamalan’s cinematic vision, and the thrill of working with him, that every actor from both films agreed to resurrect their roles for Glass. “Unbreakable and Split were both, in a way, deconstructionist superhero movies,” McAvoy says. “Split didn’t even feel like a superhero, or super villain, movie at all. It was just this creepy, scary movie that only really revealed itself at the end as having anything to do with ‘super people.’ That’s exciting because I’m in super hero movies myself with X-men, and I love them, but we can’t just keep telling straight-up super hero movies can we? We’ve got to start putting superheroes in different environments and situations, and this film certainly does that.”

For Charlayne Woodard, it’s Shyamalan’s appreciation and admiration for actors, and what actors do, that sets him apart, and that makes actors willing to go to any length to help realize his vision. “Night loves artists,” Woodard says. “One day on set I heard him refer to a certain actor. He said, about her, ‘… she’s a Stradivarius.’ Night compares artists to the best violin ever made, believing that we can play anything and everything. It doesn’t get any better than that. He's marvelous.”

THE CHARACTERS

Kevin Wendell Crumb/The Horde

James McAvoy

Kevin Wendell Crumb is one of the most fascinating, terrifying, complex and wounded characters any actor could play. With 23 distinct personalities, Crumb is a role that requires an actor with range, nuance and subtlety, because under the monster that is The Beast, and the domineering personalities such as Dennis and Patricia that make up The Horde, is the subsumed character of Crumb himself. “Kevin is a guy who was abused horribly by his mother and as a result his mind fragmented and dissociated. From that 23 other people were born,” McAvoy says. “He is somebody who has been in a kind of coma for large periods of his life while other people have being conscious in his body. He’s one of the many that live in the body that used to be just his.”

“I think of The Horde as a collective, some good people and some bad people. I don’t think of any of them as truly evil, but as people who are involved in doing bad things, and there are reasons why they’re doing them. Are there reasons why they deserve to be captured and incarcerated and possibly punished? Probably. But does that make them bad? I don’t know about that.”

In Glass, Crumb is confined in a cell that has been outfitted with a kind of strobe, a hypnosis light. If one of his threatening personalities emerges, the strobe will activate and trigger a different personality to replace it. The Beast within him has battled David Dunn to a stalemate and wants to destroy Dunn. He wants to be free. But not all of Crumb’s personalities believe in The Beast, and some are questioning whether Dr. Staples’ hypothesis – that The Beast’s super powers are merely a psychological delusion – may have some truth.

“Playing Kevin is overwhelming because he finds the whole world overwhelming,” McAvoy says. “He doesn't want to be alive, so it's exceptionally sad playing Kevin.” His other personalities present their own challenges. “It’s really about time management, because doing prep for that many characters is a lot,” he says. “But the work is the same work I do when I’m playing any character: What does this character want? How do they go about getting it? What are the things stopping them from getting it? You do all your background work just like you always do. It’s just about trying to do tons of it.”

In one scene in Glass, McAvoy has to transition through multiple characters in a very short period of time. “That becomes tricky, when you have to transition from one to the other to the other on-camera,” he says. “You have to be able to commit fully to the next person whether that person in the same emotional space as the last one. So you can get yourself in a place of hysteria or deep sadness or panic, and then the next personality has to be super calm and in a good mood and jovial. That’s quite hard because your heart rate is physically different to what it should be when you go into the next character. It’s like sudden gear changes.”

But the most physically demanding part of the role, by far, is playing The Beast. “He’s so physically tense and on the edge of pouncing because he’s so animalistic that I find it hurts me, physically, to play him,” McAvoy says. “After I play him for a few days, my collar bone and neck are killing me for days afterward. On Split it didn’t matter as much because I only did it for a couple of days for that shoot, but this time I’m playing The Beast a lot more frequently.”

One of the biggest changes from Split to Glass was the age of the cast. In Split, McAvoy was one of the oldest members of the principal cast. This time he’s younger than his two main co-stars. “On Split I sort of felt like a granddad,” he says. “This time, I feel younger because more senior people are around me. And working with Samuel L Jackson and Bruce Willis… that’s just proper nuts. Having watched and admired their movies when I was younger, getting to work with them is strange, brilliant and fun.”

For his Split and Glass co-star Anya Taylor-Joy, watching McAvoy play this role has a different emotional impact. “Kevin breaks my heart,” Taylor-Joy says. “I walked into my house the other day and my parents were watching Split on TV. I walked in just at the moment in the movie where we meet Kevin and I burst into tears. He’s the person that Casey really connects with. He's a mirror to her, and I think the relationship that the two of them have is so pure and so tender. Kevin’s a really wounded soul and somebody that needs protecting. That's why the alter personalities came; they came to protect him.”

David Dunn/The Overseer

Bruce Willis

In the 16 years since the events of Unbreakable, David Dunn has lost his wife to cancer, has created his own security business with his son, and has devoted himself to fighting crime as a vigilante called The Overseer. But the cost of all that has been high, and the price of all that history is reflected in Bruce Willis’s performance. “Bruce is the most chilled dude,” McAvoy says. “He is so relaxed, but he’s bringing such a heaviness to the part. That’s beautiful, and something I haven’t seen a lot in a superhero movies: the weight, the toll that the work takes on them. And it’s expressed so brilliantly by Bruce. His natural laidback-ness translates into something really sad in the character. David Dunn is this lonely man. All he really has in his life is his vigilante purpose and his son, and that’s kind of it. There’s such a purity and sadness in what Bruce is doing with that.”

Willis welcomed the opportunity to revisit the character, and to reunite with Shyamalan. “It was fun to come back and tell the continuation of this character’s story so many years later,” Willis says. “Rarely, if ever, does an actor have an opportunity like this. Night creates characters that are unique and memorable and feel personal. I was just as thrilled to play David Dunn as I was the first time I played him.”

When Dunn decides to pursue The Beast, it is with the sense that only he can stop him, and the burden continues to weigh on him after the two men are hospitalized together at Raven Hill. Dunn’s weakness, his kryptonite, is water, and so Dr. Staple has rigged Dunn’s isolation room with a massive water rig that will instantly flood the room if Dunn tries to escape. As Dr. Staple attempts to treat Dunn for his alleged delusion, Dunn’s only concern is protecting everyone in the hospital, and the public in general, from The Beast. He’s a man worn down by the burden of his superpowers, but he also can’t find a path away from it. If Dr. Staple is right, it could be, in a way, a relief, even if he can’t quite bring himself to believe her.

For his fellow cast members, working with Willis was a singular experience.

Jackson has worked with Willis on multiple films, including Pulp Fiction, and the two veteran actors have developed a natural ease to their working relationship. “I always enjoy working with Bruce,” Jackson says. “He’s a very familiar and easy character for me to fall into, and to fall into patterns with.”

That sense of familiarity was also felt between Willis and his director, who were making their third film together. “Working with Night on The Sixth Sense, we had a really good time shooting that movie and developed a friendship and a high level of trust,” Willis says. “When he told me that he had an idea for a script for me, which was Unbreakable, I immediately said, ‘OK, I’m in.’ I didn’t even know what the subject matter was going to be. Similarly, when he approached me about Glass, I agreed immediately, I didn’t have to read the script. To be able to work again with Night as a friend and collaborator was a dream come true.”

For Spencer Treat Clark, the opportunity to revisit the father-son roles that he and Willis portrayed in Unbreakable, now from an adult perspective, made a deep impact on him. “Night and Bruce have so many great stories about each other and about Unbreakable that I really didn't know about before; it is so weird having the adult prospective now about that experience,” Clark says. “They have a really cool relationship; it’s like a big brother, little brother relationship. We had a dinner at Night’s right before we started shooting, and Night has a room in his house with memorabilia from all his previous films. It was wild walking through that, with Bruce reflecting on his experiences and Night on his. We were all starting to get pretty excited for the weeks and months ahead.”

“Unbreakable was a pretty pivotal experience for me growing up, and it was fun going back and looking at Joseph, and my experience playing him, and how he’s evolved. I got two really cool set gifts at the end of Unbreakable. One was from Bruce. He gave me the complete CD box sets of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, which is super cool. Those CDs got so much use. I wore through them through my Discman all through my early teens. I started playing music because of those, started playing the guitar and I became a musician.”

Casey Cook

Anya Taylor-Joy

When we first re-encounter Casey Cooke in Glass, it has been three weeks since she escaped from Kevin Crumb’s most lethal alter, The Beast. “Casey is a girl who went through something that no one should ever have to go through,” Taylor-Joy says. “But she's resilient; she bounces back. In this movie we find her and she's quite different than she was in Split. Her experience was terrifying, but it gave her the permission to be herself and to stop blaming herself for a lot of things.”

She’s back in high-school where (coincidentally?) David Dunn’s son, Joseph, went to school. She is no longer the victim of her abusive uncle, and her status as the sole survivor of The Beast has made her a subject of fascination to her peers. She is finding her own voice, strength and power. For Taylor-Joy, that was a significant change from Casey in Split, where she was in fear for her life, and trapped in a warren of small rooms the whole time. At first, Taylor-Joy wasn’t quite at ease with the new Casey. She had to almost re-discover her, in a way.

“What I found semi-uncomfortable was being Casey without the confines of the room,” she says. “In a high-pressure situation you act differently. I had to understand who Casey was now. I had a bit of growing pain within myself, but now I feel very comfortable with her, and it actually gives me a lot of peace to understand her in a new way.”

“I have such an intense connection with my character that there was an element of being a bit scared,” Taylor-Joy says. “The first day on Glass, it felt so strange to make that jump because it's only three weeks after the events of Split and Casey is different. It was a little surreal. But I came to feel grateful for it because the character and I got to have a more decent parting. Without that, I would never have known where she went. I also had no idea if Casey and Kevin would see each other again, so my first scene with James [McAvoy] was really emotional, actually.”

In the film, Casey becomes an advocate for the hospitalized Kevin Crumb. Despite his disorder, he was the first person who saw Casey clearly and recognized her pain. She, in turn, has recognized his. “Both of these characters are so broken and have been so hurt that they together have this bond,” Taylor-Joy says. “They’re kindred souls.”

Dr. Ellie Staple

Sarah Paulson

The most prominent new character of the trilogy is Dr. Ellie Staple, a renowned psychiatrist who specializes in patients suffering from the delusion that they are comic-book characters. She has developed an experimental medical procedure to rid the patients of their delusions, but it does not leave them entirely unscathed.

That complexity in Dr. Staple required an actor who could not only hold her own against three strong characters (and actors) in Price, Crumb and Dunn, but also an actor of great emotional depth. Shyamalan found that ideal actor in Paulson. “I wanted someone who could match those three men in craft, and also in buoyancy and entertainment,” Shyamalan says. “I also needed someone who could match them in intelligence, and really own the screen against these three superstars.

Sarah was chosen to fight that fight and boy, did she deliver.”

Paulson was eager to dive into the character. “Ellie is a doctor of incredible compassion who has a deep-seated belief that her way of thinking is an answer to some of the world's problems,” Paulson says. “Not everybody is on board with that, but I can get behind her reasoning for the things that she does.”

This involves elaborate systems to keep Crumb, Dunn and Price contained and controlled. As empathetic as Dr. Staple seems, she is also driven by her own ambitions and desires to establish a psychiatric breakthrough that will set a new benchmark for her profession. The question is, is she fixing these men, or breaking them?

“The overarching questions of this movie are, what do we all have inside of ourselves? Is it good to believe we're capable of anything and everything? Should we doubt? How much gravity do you want to give to your own belief?” Paulson says. “That internal thought process is interesting to ponder. This movie is not set in a fantasy world. It’s reality. So what happens when you really have a belief that you have super powers, and that you might be superhuman?”

What makes Dr. Staple so compelling as a character is that she’s not just clinical, but has a strong emotional intelligence and compassion. “It's a very fine line between her clinical manner and her need for order and her ability to become incredibly connected to the person she's talking to,” Paulson says. “She's incredibly empathic, and that is the thing Night wanted her to lead with, so that she doesn't become sort of a typical, clinical doctor. She’s a human being who is deeply affected by the people she's sitting across from.”

In one of the film’s most fascinating scenes, Dr. Staple is questioning Kevin Crumb as he cycles through personality after personality in a matter of minutes. “It was impossible for me not to sort of shudder in awe every time James moved in and out of a different character,” Paulson says. “From an acting standpoint, it was incredibly inspiring, and I was able to use some of that emotional response for Dr. Staple, to have her be moved by what she is witnessing.”

Elijah Price/Mr. Glass

Samuel L. Jackson

Since we last saw Elijah Price proudly confess to his crimes at the end of Unbreakable, and declare himself the supervillain Mr. Glass, he has been housed at Raven Hill hospital in the psychiatric ward. Now in a wheelchair permanently, he has been heavily sedated for much of his incarceration there in an attempt to keep his mesmeric intellect contained. Early in his stay there, he had managed to shut down the hospital’s entire electrical grid.

When we first see him in Glass, he’s a shard of his former self, a dead-eyed blank who doesn’t even acknowledge that his mother is in the room, much less answer her questions. But it soon becomes clear that there is more going on behind those eyes. “He’s pretty much the same guy,” Samuel L. Jackson says. “Elijah is still very calculating, he’s still very watchful, he’s still strong. He has just been isolated, which has given him a lot more time to formulate opinions, formulate plans, and to dig in to what he believes even further.”

The arrival of Dunn and Crumb presents Price with a prime opportunity to not only liberate himself, but to liberate the culture by exposing the truth that superpeople walk among us. This puts him in direct opposition to Dr. Staple’s belief that the men are deluded. What makes Price so dangerous, of course, is that no one knows what he’s up to. Until, that is, it’s too late.

“Elijah has been living with pain — relentless, chronic pain — since his birth,” says Charlayne Woodard, who plays Price’s mother. “This has affected him in extraordinary ways. I won’t say he’s evil. I won’t say he’s good — because aren’t we all both, really?”

Indeed, one of the film’s most clever narrative devices is gradually shifting our perceptions of Price. The character doesn’t change, but we begin to see him in a new light. “The idea of having a marginalized character that is your hero, who is the title character, is very satisfying for the audience,” Shyamalan says. “You really want him to succeed, even if some of the things he’s doing are dastardly.”

Mrs. Price

Charlayne Woodard

When we first meet Mrs. Price in Unbreakable, she is the tough-love mother of a pre-teen Elijah Price. His genetic illness, osteogenesis imperfecta, has caused his bones to break so easily that young Elijah has become housebound. He’s afraid of the world. But he loves comic books, and his mother forces him to leave the house by routinely placing a new comic book on the bench in the playground across the street from their home. She coaxes him back into the world.

Now, in Glass, her son is so heavily sedated he seems to almost not exist, but she is determined not to give up on him and believes that he is still inside there, somewhere. He just needs to right motivation to come out again.

“Elijah Price is my baby, and we’ve had a tough time of it, but we’re survivors,” says Charlayne Woodard, who reprises her role as Mrs. Price in Glass. Returning to the role has been a joy, she says. “It's wonderful for me, because 17 years ago I was playing an older woman, and now I am legitimately an older woman. Experience has ‘growed me up.’ I come to Mrs. Price with a little more knowledge, and a little more courage.”

For Woodard, filming Glass was also an opportunity to catch up with people she hadn’t seen in almost two decades. Because Shyamalan’s crews are so loyal, and because he’s so loyal to them, the set of Glass sometimes felt like a family reunion. “Night creates such a lovely work environment,” she says. “You can tell that he really cares for actors and his crew. The set is a family, period, the end.”

Joseph Dunn

Spencer Treat Clark

The son of David Dunn, Joseph is now 25 years old and runs Dunn Security with his father. In Unbreakable, Joseph, then 9, was the first true believer that his father had superpowers. He still believes in his father, and has become David’s partner in vigilante crime fighting, helping him locate criminals, monitoring his father’s activities remotely via camera, and communicating with his father through an earpiece during his missions. In many ways, Joseph has become his father’s protector, assessing the risk of various situations and also staying wary of the police, who are on the hunt for David. His father’s incarceration at Raven Hill will test Joseph’s ability to do that, and he will be forced to question his belief in his father’s powers.

For Spencer Treat Clark, the opportunity to resurrect a role he played as a child was a gift, and one that stunned him. “It was pretty unbelievable, the whole thing,” Clark says. “When Split came out I was on a camping trip with my friends and had my phone on airplane mode. When I got back I had, like, 15 texts from people asking me if I’d seen it. So I went, and at the end, when I heard the Unbreakable score and then saw Bruce, and I was like, ‘Huh?’” I really had no expectations, and when I had a call with Night, I was pretty sure it was going to be a courtesy call to tell me they had hired Chris Hemsworth to play Joseph. But he said he had a role for me, and two months later I got the script. It was crazy.”

It also surprised him how substantial and pivotal the role of Joseph is in Glass. It was a much larger part than Clark had anticipated. “I more or less said yes before I read the script, which gave my agents zero latitude to negotiate,” he says, laughing. “Night probably could have dressed me up in a clown costume and stuck me in a corner for the whole movie and I still would have been down.”

One crucial side benefit of the role for Clark was the opportunity to reconnect with Shyamalan, who had been a mentor to him on Unbreakable. “Night was a big influence on me,” he says. “He was somebody who was successfully pursuing the arts and he was young, too. At the time, he was a couple of months younger than I am now, which is crazy to think about. I have incredible pictures of us both from that time, both looking like babies.”

LOCATIONS AND FILMING

Brick Warehouses and Abandoned Hospitals

The Search for Glass architecture

As with almost all of Shyamalan’s films, Glass was shot in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The two most critical locations that Shyamalan needed to find were a brick warehouse, where The Beast is holding the cheerleaders he intends to kill and where The Beast and David Dunn engage in an epic brawl, and a building that could become Raven Hill hospital, where most of Glass takes place.

To find the perfect locations, Shyamalan asked location manager STACI HAGENBAUGH, with whom he’d worked on his films The Happening, The Visit and Split, to begin the search.

“We probably scouted at least 25 potential brick factory options before we landed on one,” Hagenbaugh says. “We were down to two, and ultimately the Frankford Arsenal, a former 19^th century Army ammunition plant in northeast Philadelphia, was the one that won. That location was going to have so many different things going on: a lot of stunt work, a lot of visual effects work, and everything happening at the same time. Plus, there’s a lot of interior and exterior interplay in that scene. Night was very adamant that he needed the exterior and interior to be able to work together. For me it was such an iconic location to be at because it hasn't been shot for a very long time. We were really excited to be there.”

Sadly, that did not mean that shooting there was much fun for the actors, primarily because it involved a massive fight scene in the rain. “The action sequences in this movie are really on another level,” says executive producer Schneider. McAvoy puts it in more concrete terms. “Being in the rain and doing the stunts at the brick factory, it was fun,” he says. “But you’re playing someone who’s impervious to cold and you’re standing in freezing rain with your shirt off going, ‘I’M THE BEAST!,’ When what you really feel like is a wimp who is freezing and whose nipples are harder than diamonds.”

Making matters worse, McAvoy had to attack Willis while Willis was wearing a camera rig. “So Bruce had a camera on steel poles, and the poles were coming out the back of his costume,” McAvoy says. “But thankfully Bruce is a gentle giant. He was lovely.”

To find the location for Raven Hill Hospital, Hagenbaugh had an inside track on one that might fit the bill. “I had worked with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania before at a couple of their facilities, and I'd known that Allentown State Hospital was closed for a few years, but I had never seen any photos of it,” she says. “As soon as I took one look at it, I knew that Night was going to love it for his movie.” She sent him the photos that a colleague of hers had taken. “Within five my phone rang and Night was like, ‘What is this place? We have to go see it!’ A couple of days later we were there and that was that. He's such a visual person, and I think there was an immediate connection to the location once he walked inside.”

It was so perfect, in fact, that it helped shape the film itself. “We found the hospital so early that Night was able to do some revisions to the script and write to the location, and to really tailor, visually, what was happening in the space,” says producer Bienstock.

Shyamalan and Hagenbaugh spent a few days exploring the hospital, which had been a psychiatric hospital from 1913, when it opened, until it closed in 2010. At its peak in 1950 it housed more than 2,000 patients. “We started making a list of which areas he really wanted to put in the movie,” Hagenbaugh says. “He found some areas that he loved and then wrote scenes especially for them.”

One room that provided a particular bit of inspiration was a former day room for the patients. “It was painted a bright Pepto-Bismol pink; it was pretty incredible,” Hagenbaugh says. “Night and Ashwin and I looked at it, and Night really responded to it, but there were some difficulties with actually shooting that room. So we ended up replicating that same look, that same pink room, in a room one floor below it.” Indeed, it became perhaps the most pivotal room in the hospital, the room where Dr. Staple meets with Dunn, Price and Crumb together for their group sessions.

In some ways, the hospital itself set the tone for the entire film. Because it was the first location selected, Hagenbaugh says, it determined the visual direction of everything else. “We wanted all locations to have that same kind of vibe,” she says. “Just a little bit eerie.”

The cast and crew definitely felt that eerie vibe while shooting at the hospital.

“That’s a spooky place to shoot,” Jackson says. “Sometimes, going from the set to the bathroom, you had to do a lot of long walks by yourself down those hallways, make some turns and do some twists. It’s a little creepy in there.”

THE PRODUCTION DESIGN

Color, Claustrophobia and Character

Crafting the Glass Universe

For production designer Chris Trujillo, the Allentown State Hospital also helped guide the overall look of the film. “To go into those big, old derelict facilities and see all of that turn-of-the-century grandeur is incredible,” he says. “And the fact that it was designed for the purpose of a mental health facility is also really interesting. It gave us insight into what that world looked like.”

The holding rooms for each of the three main characters – Dunn, Price and Crumb – had to be both visually in sync with the design of the overall hospital, but also be retrofitted to control each man’s particular powers. Character and story drove design. “Each room is tailored to who each of those men is,” producer Rajan says. “David Dunn, who has a weakness for water, is in a room with a water system that can spray water at him if he tries to escape. The Horde [Crumb] is in a solitary room with lights that can control his personality changes, and Mr. Glass [Price] is in a padded room so that he's not able to break his bones. The rooms each have a personality, given the character.”

Dunn’s water-system room was particularly challenging to design, Trujillo says. “It was a lot to conceptualize, to figure out how to make that set really interesting and striking but also believable. The materials had to exist in the real world, and it had to be something that could conceivably be created.” The results speak for themselves.

In general, Trujillo wanted to employ a subtle design aesthetic, but to use color in very specific and strategic ways. “There's a very clear color theme running through all of the sets and the costuming,” Trujillo says. “The color quality is very specific in places so that the audience knows our intention. One space may have a desaturated, almost claustrophobic vibe and another may be more saturated, a little louder color. We’re trying to be very specific about what we're suggesting about the psychology of the characters, based on the color of the spaces. That’s very deliberate.”

Nowhere is that more evident than in the room where Dr. Staple treats Dunn, Crumb and Price together, in a sort of superhero group-therapy session. “It’s this enormous, fabulous room that is monochromatically in pink tones,” Trujillo says. “That was a little counterintuitive for me, but Night was very confident about it, and it's pretty incredible. It’s this hypnotic, Kubrick-ian, bizarre room. That was a lot of fun.”

THE COSTUMES

Purple, Green and Gold

Designing a Perfect Palette

One of the greatest challenges facing costume designer Paco Delgado
was merging the palettes and visual styles of two movies made 16 years apart, and to also create an aesthetic specific to Glass. “We are mixing two different stories: the story that was told in Unbreakable and the story that was told in Split,” Delgado says. “That’s complex because you have to stick with a certain palette. Historically, each character has a distinct wardrobe color. David Dunn wears green, Mr. Glass is purple, and The Horde is yellow. So for Glass, we had taken all three colors from all the movie palettes. And that means you end up with a limited palette for the rest of the characters in the film. On the positive side, it gives you a very clear color path to follow.”

“We have these characters who, apart from being superheroes, lead normal lives. We tried to find the balance where the superhero starts and where the human being finishes. It’s two sides of the same character. For example, when we want to dress David Dunn, we stick with the green palette, but it’s much more subtle than when he’s wearing the green poncho. It’s the same for the other characters.”

Those three colors – green, purple and yellow – extended into the looks of each man’s family member or surrogate family member. This created a visual connection between David Dunn and his son, between Price and his mother, and between Crumb and Casey Cooke. The key was to do it in a way that felt organic and subtle. “Obviously these family members are not superheroes, so the color identification for each is not as strong,” Delgado says.

Delgado and his team also had to solve a little water problem. There’s quite a lot of it in Glass, and that restricted which fabrics they could use, particularly for David Dunn. “Water is his kryptonite; it’s the only way that this character can be defeated,” Delgado says. “So you need to work with materials that don’t get ruined by water. That was great, in a way, because we were able to work with certain images — like raincoats and things like that — that are sort of magical.”

And one of the best side benefits of working with actors who have all played their characters before was that they brought their own ideas to some of the clothing and accessories. For one scene, Delgado had dressed Jackson’s Elijah Price in a cravat pierced with a pin, but Delgado felt the pin wasn’t working. “Then Sam said, ‘Why don’t you create a pin with the initials of my name: Mr. Glass?’ So we made this pin with ‘MG,’ in diamonds. I loved that idea.”

THE VISUAL EFFECTS

Powerhouse Players

The Subtle Art of CGI

A signature hallmark of all Shyamalan films is the seamless integration of visual effects into a real world. Unlike with almost every other major studio movie, and certainly all superhero movies, Shyamalan’s effects never call attention to themselves. In fact it’s often impossible to tell which elements, if any, are computer- generated at all. That is both by creative intent, but it’s also borne of practical considerations.

“With Glass, we are making a comic-book movie that is one-tenth the cost of every other comic-book movie,” Shyamalan says. “I do that for many, many reasons, but artistically, I believe in minimalism and I believe in limitations. I believe we do our best work when we’re faced with parameters: These are your four crayons; what painting can you make?”

That philosophy extends to visual effects. “We want the film to feel grounded, and yet compete with that level of spectacle that audiences have come to expect from, say, a Marvel movie,” he says. “Now, audiences know tacitly, when they come to my movies, that’s not what you’re going to see. They’re going to see a psychological thriller. That gives us an advantage. If you’re going 30 miles an hour and you suddenly jump to 45 miles per hour, it feels like 60. We count on that illusion. You’re watching a drama and then, suddenly, there’s something just slightly extraordinary. That’s what the CGI does for us in Glass.”

Shyamalan, his cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, and the rest of the creative team worked with FX company Powerhouse, originally based in Philadelphia, to achieve effects on Glass that will thrill audiences without taking them out of the movie. “I’ve had situations on other movies where I wasn’t confident in the CGI team, so I kept looking at non-CGI answers,” Shyamalan says. “But when you have a group like Powerhouse, you start to go, ‘Hey, this is possible! That is possible!’ It opens up a different way of thinking about it. They did just a wonderful job, and often with things that audiences will never even realize.”

THE MUSIC

Go West

A Singular Sonic Score

All franchises, from Star Wars to Jurassic Park to Despicable Me have their signature musical themes. The music of the film is immediately recognizable and synonymous with the franchise itself. Glass may be the third part of a trilogy, but it’s unlike any franchise ever made, and that presented Shyamalan and his composer West Dylan Thordson with an opportunity to create a score unlike any ever made, too.

“The music for Glass was a unique challenge, because we’re making a sequel to two movies from two different generations, and one of the concomitant issues of that is that you’re talking musical styles from two different generations,” Shyamalan says. “Unbreakable was kind of an old-school Hollywood score. It’s very unusual and has a great percussion kind of movement to it. It was cutting-edge at that time, but it’s played by a 100-piece orchestra. The way we approached Split was sonically, with almost a Nine Inch Nails-y vibe. We were taking a cello sound and turning it and twisting it and bending it, and that was very cutting edge for now. So how do you bring these two approaches to one film?”

The solution was for Thordson to take the themes from Unbreakable, composed by James Newton Howard, and revise them in his own style and musicality. “It came out more minimalized, very, very, simple and stripped down with kind of the tones of West,” Shyamalan says. They then used the musical themes from Split that Thordson had composed for that film. He also composed new themes specific to Glass. Finally, for flashback scenes from Unbreakable, they used the original score from that film.

“It was an evolution,” Shyamalan says. “West was on the movie for a good eleven months, I think. This was a really big commitment. He moved to Philadelphia, set up his stuff at our offices and at his home in Philadelphia, and just went for it. And he has a really unusual way of approaching it.”

For one experiment, which wasn’t ultimately used in the film, he recorded sounds at the Allentown State Hospital where the Raven Hill scenes were shot. “He would do incredible things with percussion,” Shyamalan says. “He would go in and record all night after we finished shooting. At 4 a.m. he would be hitting drums and having a violinist come in and play, and it would echo in the auditorium and in the hallways and he would record it. Those sonic and intellectual and ineffable things make you feel that something in a scene is resonant.”

Through the process of Split and Glass, Thordson and Shyamalan found that they are creative kindred spirits, in a way. “Authenticity is our main objective as filmmakers, and everything you hear in the movie is practically done by West,” Shyamalan says. “It’s created by him, synthesized and moved by him in some way. It’s one man’s tastes helping me tell my story, so you’re getting these very strong, bold moves.”

Universal Pictures Presents, in association with Perfect World Pictures, a Blinding Edge Pictures/Blumhouse Production of an M. Night Shyamalan Film: Glass, starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Anya Taylor-Joy, with Sarah Paulson and Samuel L. Jackson. The film also stars Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woodard, Luke Kirby and Adam David Thompson. The film’s music is by West Dylan Thordson, and its costumes are by Paco Delgado. Glass is edited by Luke Ciarrocchi and Blu Murray. The production designer is Chris Trujillo and the director of photography is Michael Gioulakis. The film is executive produced by Steven Schneider, Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum and Kevin Frakes. The film is produced by M. Night Shyamalan and Jason Blum, and by Marc Bienstock and Ashwin Rajan. Glass is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. A Universal Release ©2018 Universal Studios.www.glassmovie.com

ABOUT THE CAST

Golden Globe Award-nominated actor JAMES MCAVOY (Kevin Crumb) won over American audiences with his critically acclaimed breakthrough performances in The Last King of Scotland and Atonement. Having been referred to as “The best young British actor of our times” by Empire magazine, McAvoy continues to test himself with a wide variety of work on stage, television and film and is regarded as one of the industry’s most exciting acting talents.

McAvoy most recently applied his vocal talents to Paramount’s Sherlock Gnomes, the sequel to 2011’s Gnomeo & Juliet, in which he reprised the role of Gnomeo. The movie also includes the voices of Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Maggie Smith and Michael Caine. In 2017, he was seen in Universal Pictures’ Atomic Blonde opposite Charlize Theron. That same year, McAvoy also starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s critically acclaimed thriller Split. Additional upcoming projects include Dark Phoenix, where he will reprise his role of Professor Charles Xavier, and the sequel to New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It—It: Chapter Two.

In 2014, McAvoy was seen as corrupt cop Bruce Robertson in the highly acclaimed sensation Filth, for which he received a British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) Best Actor award, London Critics Circle British Actor of the Year award and an Empire Award for Best Actor. McAvoy also served as producer on the film. Additionally, McAvoy starred in the Golden Globe Award-winning drama Atonement in 2007, which was directed by Joe Wright and co-starred Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan. His performance received a Golden Globe Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nomination for Best Actor, and he was awarded both London Critics’ Circle and U.K. Regional Critics Awards for Best Actor in addition to receiving the Virtuosos Award from the Santa Barbara Interntaional Film Festival.

In 2005, McAvoy starred in the title role in Damien O’Donnell’s Rory O’Shea Was Here. McAvoy earned a British Actor of the Year nomination from the London Critics’ Circle for his performance. That summer, he traveled to Uganda to take on the lead role of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland, directed by Oscar^® and BAFTA Award winner Kevin Macdonald. He earned nominations from BAFTA, BIFA, London Critics’ Circle and the European Film Academy for his performance. In December 2005, McAvoy was seen in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He earned a nomination for British Supporting Actor of the Year from the London Critics’ Circle for his performance.

McAvoy’s other film credits include Submergence with Alicia Vikander, Victor Frankenstein opposite Daniel Radcliffe, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby trilogy opposite Jessica Chastain, Trance with Rosario Dawson, Welcome to the Punch alongside Mark Strong, Sony Pictures’ animated movie Arthur Christmas, Robert Redford’s The Conspirator opposite Robin Wright, Wanted opposite Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway and Penelope opposite Christina Ricci and Reese Witherspoon.

Prior to making his name on the silver screen, McAvoy first came to popular attention on the small screen with the role of Josh in the 2002 Channel 4 adaptation of Zadie Smith’s popular novel “White Teeth.” In fall 2003, McAvoy played Dan Foster in the BAFTA Award-winning BBC political drama series State of Play. The series ran in the U.K. and on BBC America and went on to become one of the most successful U.K. exports of the last decade. He also left a lasting mark on high-profile TV projects such as the World War I drama Regeneration and HBO’s Band of Brothers. The actor’s popularity really started to grow when he appeared in the BAFTA-winning Channel 4 series Shameless as car thief Steve. He earned a nomination from the British Comedy Awards for Best TV Comedy Newcomer in 2004 for his performance.

McAvoy has also played a large role in the London theater scene. In 2009, McAvoy took to the stage at the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End where he played the two roles of Walker and his father Ned in Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. His performance earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor. He was also seen in Breathing Corpses at the Royal Court (2005), Privates on Parade at the Donmar Warehouse (2001) and Out in the Open at Hampstead Theatre (2001). In 2013, McAvoy starred in Macbeth at Trafalgar Studios. His performance earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor and the show was nominated for Best Revival. In 2015, McAvoy starred in The Ruling Class, which earned him a London Evening Standard Award, an Olivier Award nomination and a WhatsOnStage nomination for Best Actor.

McAvoy was born in the Scotstoun area of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 and is a graduate of the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

BRUCE WILLIS (David Dunn) has demonstrated incredible versatility in a career that has included such diverse characterizations as the prizefighter in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994 Palme D’Or winner at Cannes), the philandering contractor in Robert Benton’s Nobody’s Fool, the heroic time traveler in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, the traumatized Vietnam veteran in Norman Jewison’s In Country, the compassionate child psychologist in M. Night Shyamalan’s Oscar^®-nominated The Sixth Sense (for which he won the People’s Choice Award) and his signature role, Detective John McClane, in the Die Hard pentalogy.

Following studies at Montclair State College’s prestigious theater program, the New Jersey native honed his craft in several stage plays and countless television commercials, before landing the leading role in Sam Shepard’s 1984 stage drama Fool for Love, a run which lasted for 100 performances off-Broadway.

Willis next won international stardom and several acting awards, including Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe awards, for his starring role as private eye David Addison on the hit television series Moonlighting, winning the role over 3,000 other contenders. At the same time, he made his motion picture debut opposite Kim Basinger in Blake Edwards’ romantic comedy Blind Date.

In 1988, he originated the role of John McClane in the blockbuster film Die Hard, one of the highest-grossing releases of that year. He later reprised the character in four sequels: Die Hard: Die Harder (1990), Die Hard: With A Vengeance (1995’s global box-office champ), Live Free, Die Hard (one of the box-office hits of summer 2007) and a Good Day To Die Hard (2013).

His wide array of film roles includes collaborations with such respected and prolific  filmmakers including Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom), Michael Bay (Armageddon), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), Alan Rudolph (Mortal Thoughts, Breakfast of Champions), Walter Hill (Last Man Standing), Robert Benton (Billy Bathgate, Nobody’s Fool), Rob Reiner (The Story of Us), Edward Zwick (The Siege), Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), Barry Levinson (Bandits, What Just Happened, Rock the Kasbah), Terry Gilliam (12 Monkey’s), Quentin Tarintino (Pulp Fiction),  Robert Zemeckis (Death Becomes Her) and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Grind House).

Other motion picture credits include Red, The Jackal, Mercury Rising, Hart’s War, The Whole Nine Yards (and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards), The Kid, Tears of the Sun, Hostage, 16 Blocks, Alpha Dog, Lucky Number Slevin,  Perfect Stranger, Looper and Moonrise Kingdom. He also voiced the character of the wise-cracking infant Mikey in Look Who’s Talking and Look Who’s Talking Too as well as the lead characters RJ & Spike in the animated hit features Over the Hedge and Rugrats Go Wild!

In addition to his work before the cameras, Willis made his Broadway debut last year as the author Paul Sheldon who’s tormented by one of his readers (played by Laurie Metcalf) in a new stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, Misery. He established his interest in theater when in 1997 he co-founded A Company of Fools, a non-profit theater troupe committed to developing and sustaining stage work in the Wood River Valley of Idaho, and throughout the U.S. He starred in and directed a staging of Sam Shepard’s dark comedy True West at the Liberty Theater in Hailey, Idaho. The play, which depicts the troubled relationship between two brothers, was aired on Showtime and dedicated to Willis' late brother Robert.

An accomplished musician as well, Willis recorded the 1986 Motown album The Return of Bruno, which went platinum and contained the No. 5 Billboard hit “Respect Yourself.” Three years later, he recorded a second album If It Don’t Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger. In 2002, he launched a U.S. club tour with his musical group, Bruce Willis and the Blues Band and he traveled to Iraq to play for U.S. servicemen.

One of the most interesting and commanding actresses of a generation, ANYA TAYLOR-JOY (Casey Cooke) won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor as well as the Chopard Trophy for Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the EE Rising Star Award at the BAFTA Awards for her breakthrough role in A24’s The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers.

Next August, Taylor-Joy will take on the lead role of teen sorceress Magik in 20^th Century Fox’s The New Mutants, director Josh Boone’s new take on the much-loved franchise. She has also completed filming Radioactive, the biopic of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, from Oscar^®-nominated Marjane Satrapi. Taylor-Joy plays Irene, daughter of Marie Curie, played by Rosamund Pike. She has also completed the independent feature Here Are the Young Men, based on the novel from Rob Doyle.

Taylor-Joy is currently filming season five of the acclaimed BBC series Peaky Blinders alongside Cillian Murphy. She next takes on the title role in Emma, Working Title’s adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, directed by Autumn de Wilde and produced by Graham Broadbent.

Most recently Anya took the leading role of Nella Oortman in the BBC and PBS adaptation of Jessie Burton’s international, best-selling novel The Miniaturist.

Taylor-Joy recently starred opposite Olivia Cooke in the psychological thriller Thoroughbreds. Her further credits include the titular character in Morgan and Netflix’s Barry from Black Bear Pictures that premiered to rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Award-winning actress SARAH PAULSON (Dr. Ellie Staple) has built an impressive list of credits in film, television and on stage.

Paulson’s Primetime Emmy Award win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie was earned for her portrayal of attorney Marcia Clark in the critically acclaimed mini-series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story on FX. Paulson also received a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics’ Choice Award as well as a Television Critics Association Award for this role.

Paulson recently starred in Warner Bros.’ Ocean’s 8, which opened at No. 1 in the U.S. and topped the opening-weekend figures for each of the previous Ocean’s films.

Currently in production on Aneesh Chaganty’s Run for Lionsgate, Paulson was most recently seen in Susanne Bier’s film Bird Box, opposite Sandra Bullock. The film was released by Netflix on December 21, 2018. She will next be seen in Warner Bros’ The Goldfinch this fall.

On the small screen, Paulson was most recently seen in the eighth installment of Ryan Murphy’s award-winning television series American Horror Story for FX. In addition to starring as multiple characters that season, she also made her directorial debut with the 78-minute crossover episode “Return to Murder House.” Paulson has received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in the franchise: Ally Mayfair-Richards in AHS: Cult, Sally in AHS: Hotel, conjoined twins Bette and Dot Tattler in AHS: Freak Show, Cordelia Foxx in AHS: Coven and Lana Winters in AHS: Asylum. She has also earned two Critics Choice Awards for her roles in the anthology.   

Paulson received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination and second Golden Globe Award nomination for her role as Nicolle Wallace in HBO’s critically acclaimed telefilm Game Change. Directed by Jay Roach, the film follows John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Her first Golden Globe Award nomination was for her performance in Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in which she starred opposite Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Bradley Whitford and Steven Weber. 

Paulson is set to produce and star in the upcoming series Ratched, where she will play the titular role. The series, set to be distributed by Netflix, centers on the early life of the villainous nurse from the 1962 Ken Kesey novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” 

Paulson’s other film credits include Todd Haynes’ critically acclaimed Carol alongside Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which received an Academy Award^® for Best Picture; Jeff Nichols’ Mud alongside Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey, for which the cast received the Robert Altman Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. She has also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s The Post, opposite Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep; Danny Strong’s Rebel in the Rye; Alex Lehmann’s Blue Jay opposite Mark Duplass; Fox Searchlight’s Martha Marcy May Marlene alongside Elizabeth Olsen; Lionsgate’s The Spirit, opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson; Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page; Down with Love with Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor and David Hyde Pierce; What Women Want opposite Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt; Garry Marshall’s The Other Sister, which starred Diane Keaton and Juliette Lewis; and Diggers alongside Paul Rudd and Ken Marino.

On stage, Paulson last appeared in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Talley’s Folly. She previously starred on Broadway in the two-hander Collected Stories opposite Linda Lavin; as Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, alongside Jessica Lange; in Cherry Orchard, alongside Alfred Molina and Annette Bening; and in Tracy Letts’ critically acclaimed Killer Joe.

SPENCER TREAT CLARK (Joseph Dunn) will next star in the fourth season of the TNT series Animal Kingdom and in season two of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for Netflix.

Clark grew up outside New York City. He started acting at a young age, first appearing in films such as DreamWorks’ Gladiator directed by Ridley Scott with Russell Crowe, as well as M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson.

Other film credits include Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, The Last House on the Left, Last Exorcism: Part Two, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, The Town That Dreaded Sundown for Blumhouse and Cymbeline opposite Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich and Dakota Johnson. Recent television credits include NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Criminal Minds and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

He received a bachelor degree in political science from Columbia University. Clark lives in Los Angeles.

Appearing in well over 100 films, SAMUEL L. JACKSON (Elijah Price) is one of the most respected actors in Hollywood. Jackson’s portrayal of Jules, the philosopher hit man, in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction made an indelible mark on American cinema. In addition to unanimous critical acclaim, he received Academy Award^® and Golden Globe Award nominations, as well as a Best Supporting Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

In June 2018, Jackson was seen in the long-awaited sequel to Disney’s The Incredibles. Jackson recently wrapped production on the Shaft reboot, Son of Shaft, and will next be seen in Captain Marvel opposite Brie Larson.

In 2017, Jackson starred in Lionsgate’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard with Ryan Reynolds, Salma Hayek and Gary Oldman in addition to Warner Bros.’ Kong: Skull Island with Larson and Tom Hiddleston. In 2015, Jackson appeared in Tarantino’s Oscar^®-nominated Western The Hateful Eight. He starred as Major Marquis Warren, alongside Walton Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kurt Russell. That same year, Jackson appeared in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq.

In 2016, Jackson was seen in David Yates’ The Legend of Tarzan, starring alongside Alexander Skarsgård, Margot Robbie and Christoph Waltz in addition to Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. That same year, Jackson completed production on Larson’s directorial debut Unicorn Store, The Last Full Measure with Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer and Ed Harris, as well as Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself.

In 2012, he co-starred in Tarantino’s Django Unchained as Stephen, with Waltz, Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio. He also starred in The Avengers, which is part of his nine-picture deal with Marvel Studios. Jackson reprised his role in both Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was released in April 2014, and the 2015 sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Jackson made his Broadway debut in 2011 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater in The Mountaintop, where he portrayed Martin Luther King, Jr. The play also starred Angela Bassett and was directed by Kenny Leon.

Jackson’s career began onstage upon his graduation from Morehouse College in Atlanta with a degree in dramatic arts. Among the plays were Home, A Soldier’s Play, Sally/Prince and The District Line. He also originated roles in two of August Wilson’s plays at Yale Repertory Theatre. For the New York Shakespeare Festival, Jackson appeared in Mother Courage and Her Children, Spell #7 and The Mighty Gents.

Past film credits also include RoboCop, Oldboy, Mother and Child, Iron Man 2, HBO’s The Sunset Limited, Lakeview Terrace, Soul Men, The Spirit, Jumper, Resurrecting the Champ, 1408, Black Snake Moan, Snakes on a Plane, Freedomland, Coach Carter, Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith, S.W.A.T., Changing Lanes, Formula 51, Stars Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, The Caveman’s Valentine, Eve’s Bayou, Unbreakable, Rules of Engagement, Shaft, Deep Blue Sea, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Negotiator, The Red Violin, Jackie Brown, 187, A Time to Kill, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Jungle Fever, Sphere, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Ragtime, Sea of Love, Coming to America, Do the Right Thing, School Daze, Mo’ Better Blues, Goodfellas, Patriot Games and True Romance.

On the small screen, Jackson served as executive producer for the Spike TV-animated series Afro Samurai, which premiered in 2007. The series received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Animated Program from the Television Academy. The first edition of the Afro Samurai video game launched in January 2009.

On television, in addition to The Sunset Limited, Jackson starred in John Frankenheimer’s Primetime Emmy Award-winning Against the Wall for HBO. His performance earned him a Cable Ace nomination as Best Supporting Actor in a Movie or Miniseries, as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Screenwriter, director and producer M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN (Directed/Written/Produced by) has captured the attention of audiences around the world for almost two decades, creating films that have amassed more than $3 billion worldwide. His thrillers include The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village and The Visit.

Most recently Shyamalan released the thriller Split with Universal Pictures, which was No. 1 at the box office for three weeks in a row.

In 2015, Shyamalan teamed up with Universal Pictures on the horror hit The Visit. Bringing in close to $100 million at the worldwide box office, The Visit was one of the highest grossing horror films of the year.

Shyamalan’s first foray into television also took place in 2015 when he executive produced and directed the pilot Wayward Pines. The highly anticipated 10-episode event series, based on a best-selling novel, brought to life by Shyamalan premiered May 14, 2015, on FOX. The show quietly turned into a fan favorite, becoming the No. 1 watched drama of the summer.

Shyamalan is producing a television series for Apple Television. The half-hour thriller, written by Tony Basgallop, has received a 10-episode order for Apple’s upcoming streaming platform. Shyamalan will direct the first episode.

Shyamalan began making films at a young age in his hometown near Philadelphia and by 16 he had completed 45 short films. Upon finishing high school he attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study filmmaking. During his final year at NYU, Shyamalan wrote Praying with Anger, a semiautobiographical screenplay about a student from the U.S. who goes to India and finds himself a stranger in his homeland. The film was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival alongside Reservoir Dogs and Strictly Ballroom. In the years that followed, Shyamalan wrote Stuart Little for Columbia Pictures, and completed his first mainstream feature, Wide Awake, a film that explored a boy’s search to discover his faith.

In 1999, The Sixth Sense, which starred Bruce Willis, catapulted Shyamalan into stardom and he became one of the most sought-after young filmmakers in Hollywood. One of the highest-grossing films of all time, The Sixth Sense received a total of six Academy Award^® nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Shyamalan collaborated with Willis again in 2000 on the film Unbreakable, which also starred Samuel L. Jackson. A film ahead of its time, Unbreakable has become an underground hit in the years since its release. Shyamalan once again explored the idea of a man questioning his faith in the 2002 box-office success Signs, which starred Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.

In 2004, Shyamalan released The Village, which starred Bryce Dallas Howard and Phoenix. The film explores an isolated community and the treaty they hold with the mysterious creatures living in the surrounding forest. In his next film, Lady in the Water, Shyamalan explored the supernatural world of a dark bedtime story. In 2008, Shyamalan wrote, directed and produced The Happening, which starred Mark Wahlberg. The film follows a man and his family as they try to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster. His other feature credits include The Last Airbender, Shyamalan’s first foray into family entertainment, and After Earth, an original sci-fi father-and-son story, which starred Will Smith and Jaden Smith.

Shyamalan also devotes his time to the philanthropic projects of his foundation, which he cofounded with his wife, Dr. Bhavna Shyamalan, in 2001. The M. Night Shyamalan Foundation is dedicated to supporting remarkable leaders and their grassroots efforts to remove the barriers created by poverty and inequality in their communities.

With a great love for his hometown, Shyamalan is known for filming his movies in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. He currently resides in Pennsylvania with his family.

JASON BLUM (Produced by) founder of Blumhouse Productions, is a two-time Academy Award^®-nominated and two-time Primetime Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning producer. His multi-media company is known for pioneering a new model of studio filmmaking: producing high-quality micro-budget films.  

Blumhouse is widely regarded as a driving force in the current horror renaissance. Its 2017 blockbusters Split from M. Night Shyamalan and Get Out from Jordan Peele, with combined budgets of less than $15 million, went on to gross more than $500 million worldwide. In addition, Get Out was nominated for four Academy Awards^® in 2018—including Best Picture—and won the Oscar^® for Best Original Screenplay. In October, the company’s Halloween posted the second-highest opening ($76 million) for a horror movie after IT.

Blumhouse has also produced the highly profitable The Purge, Insidious, Sinister and Paranormal Activity franchises, which together have grossed more than $1.6 billion at the global box office. Paranormal Activity, which was made for $15,000 and grossed close to $200 million worldwide, launched the Blumhouse model and became the most profitable film of all time. The company’s titles also include The Gift, Unfriended and The Visit. Blum, who was nominated for an Academy Award^® for producing Whiplash, has appeared on Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment List” each year since 2015, received the 2016 Producer of the Year Award at CinemaCon and was named to the TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people in 2017.

In television, Blum won Primetime Emmy Awards for producing HBO’s The Normal Heart and The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst and two Peabody Awards—for The Jinx and the documentary How to Dance in Ohio. In 2017, Blum launched an independent television studio with investment from ITV Studios. Recent television projects include Sharp Objects, a miniseries for HBO which starred Amy Adams and was based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel of the same name, and a miniseries for Showtime based on journalist Gabriel Sherman’s reporting on former Fox News Chief Roger Ailes with Russell Crowe as Ailes. Blumhouse also brought The Purge franchise to television, co-producing a series with Universal Cable Productions for USA Network.

Blumhouse’s multi-platform offerings include BH Tilt, a distribution company that takes advantage of new marketing strategies; Blumhouse Books, a publishing imprint with Doubleday; the digital genre network CryptTV; and Blumhouse Live, which produces live scary events for companies like AB InBev.

Blum is a member of the Sundance Institute’s Director’s Advisory Group. He also serves on the Board of the Public Theater in New York and the Board of Trustees for Vassar College. Before founding Blumhouse, Blum served as co-head of the Acquisitions and Co-Productions department at Miramax Films in New York. He began his career as the producing director of the Malaparte Theater Company, which was founded by Ethan Hawke.

He is married to journalist and screenwriter Lauren Blum and they have a daughter, Roxy, and a son, Booker.

MARC BIENSTOCK (Produced by) has reteamed with M. Night Shyamalan to produce Glass for Universal Pictures/Walt Disney Studios, the trilogy’s finale to Split and Unbreakable. Bienstock produced Split, which grossed $280 million worldwide. Prior to that, Bienstock produced The Visit for Shyamalan, which grossed $100 million worldwide. More recently, Bienstock executive produced Body Cam for Paramount Players and produced Life in a Year for Sony Pictures and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment. In addition, Bienstock executive produced the adaptation of the popular young adult novel Before I Fall, which had a world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and he also produced Sacha Gervasi’s November Criminals for Sony Pictures, which starred Ansel Elgort and Chloë Grace Moretz. He is currently reteaming with Sony and Overbrook to produce Charm City, written by Barry Jenkins.

Previously Bienstock served as a consulting production executive for AwesomenessTV from 2015 to 2017 and WWE Films from 2013 to 2015, where he managed production for film and television projects. In 2011, Bienstock teamed with Lionsgate Films to launch Guerilla Films, Lionsgate’s micro-budget division, which produced and released six films during his tenure from 2011 to 2013.

Previously, Bienstock served as the senior vice president of production for the independent production and foreign sales company Lightning Entertainment. Bienstock managed all creative and production activities for the company’s film and television divisions. During his 10-year tenure at Lightning, Bienstock produced films and television series in Mexico, Canada, Asia, Europe and throughout the United States.

Additional producer credits include All Saints; The Trials of Cate McCall, which starred Kate Beckinsale and Nick Nolte; Nurse 3D; The Remaining; School Dance with Nick Cannon and Kevin Hart; Quarantine 2: Terminal; Preacher’s Kid; Pathology; and the Wild Things franchise.

Bienstock began his career directing music videos and commercials after graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1987. He also directed two television films, The Beneficiary and Indiscreet prior to shifting his attention to producing in 1998.

ASHWIN RAJAN (Produced by) is a film and television producer as well as the president of production for Blinding Edge Pictures, the production company for two-time Oscar^®-nominated writer/director M. Night Shyamalan. Most recently, Rajan was an executive producer on the thriller Split, which was released with Universal Pictures in January 2017 and was No. 1 at the box office for three weeks in a row.

Previously, Rajan executive produced The Visit, the box-office horror success for Universal Pictures. The Visit was the highest-grossing original horror film of 2015.

Rajan’s credits also extend to television. He is currently executive producing a series for Apple TV with Shyamalan. The half-hour thriller, written by Tony Basgallop, has received a 10-episode order for Apple’s upcoming streaming platform.

Previously, Rajan executive produced the hit event series Wayward Pines, which premiered on FOX on May 14, 2015. Wayward Pines was brought to life by Shyamalan and was based on the best-selling novel “Pines,” written by Blake Crouch. The 10-episode event series debuted simultaneously in more than 125 countries. The global Wayward Pines debut was FOX’s largest day-and-date launch for a scripted series ever.

Rajan grew up in Mahopac, New York, and attended Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in economics and business management. Prior to joining Blinding Edge Pictures, Rajan was an agent at United Talent Agency (UTA) where he represented filmmakers, actors and musicians. He currently resides in the Philadelphia area. 

 

A former film critic with graduate degrees in philosophy and cinema studies from Harvard University, New York University and the University of London, STEVEN SCHNEIDER (Executive Producer) quickly rose through the ranks in Hollywood to become one of the industry’s most sought-after producers of dark-genre fare.

After publishing numerous books on horror and world cinema, including the international best seller “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” (currently in its 10^th edition and translated into over 20 languages), Schneider moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a career in producing. On the heels of 2007’s record-breaking Paranormal Activity, a film he found and helped usher to the big screen, Schneider amassed a slate of impressive feature and television projects with top filmmakers at the helm.

Producing credits include Insidious, The Devil Inside and the various installments of Paranormal Activity—all micro-budgeted horror movies that have established new box-office records both domestically and around the world. He was also a producer on Barry Levinson’s The Bay, Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem, James Wan’s Insidious: Chapter 2, Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man, Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.

Schneider most recently was an executive producer on Shyamalan’s 2017 hit thriller Split, which debuted at No. 1 at the box office and grossed over $278 million worldwide. Upcoming releases include Pet Sematary from Paramount on April 5, 2019.

Schneider’s film publications include “Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Worst Nightmare” (Cambridge University Press), “Horror International” (Wayne State University Press), “100 European Horror Films” (British Film Institute), “New Hollywood Violence” (Manchester University Press), “Dark Thoughts: Philosophic Reflections on Cinematic Horror” (Scarecrow Press) and “Underground U.S.A.: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon” (Wallflower Press).

GARY BARBER (Executive Producer) is a South African-born American film producer. Barber was the chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He is also co-founder of Spyglass Entertainment. In December 2010, Barber became chief executive officer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Under his leadership, MGM together with Eon Productions and Sony Pictures financed the successful James Bond film Skyfall, which grossed $1.1 billion. MGM then also financed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), 21 Jump Street (2012) and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013). MGM then finally moved forward with remakes of RoboCop. Barber executive produced M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable.

Barber has three daughters and lives in Los Angeles.

ROGER BIRNBAUM (Executive Producer) is a highly successful film producer who currently makes films under his banner, Cave 76 Productions. Most recently, together with Rebel Wilson, Birnbaum produced The Hustle, which stars Wilson along with Anne Hathaway. The film, directed by Chris Addison, will be released this spring.

Birnbaum produced the 2017 version of Death Wish, which was directed by Eli Roth and starred Bruce Willis. In 2016, Birnbaum produced The Magnificent Seven, which starred Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington. It opened at No. 1 the weekend it was released. It was also the opening night film of the Toronto Film Festival and the closing night film of the Venice Film Festival. Birnbaum has been working with the Israeli directors of Big Bad Wolves, Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, on their original project, Till Death. Principal photography is set to start early this year, and the film stars Jason Sudeikis and Evangeline Lily. Birnbaum has several projects in development including a remake of 12 Angry Men.

Before launching Cave 76 Productions, Birnbaum served as co-chairman and co-CEO of MGM. During his term he oversaw Skyfall and The Hobbit movies, along with the television series Vikings and the development of Fargo. Birnbaum co-founded the production, finance and distribution company Spyglass Entertainment in 1998, where he held the title of co-chairman and CEO. Spyglass box-office successes range from The Sixth Sense to Bruce Almighty. Prior to founding Spyglass Entertainment, Birnbaum co-founded Caravan Pictures, where he produced films such as Six Days Seven Nights and Grosse Point Blank. Additionally, Birnbaum produced the entire Rush Hour franchise with New Line Cinema. Before joining Caravan, Birnbaum served as president of worldwide production and executive vice president at 20^th Century Fox where he oversaw the development and production of such films as Home Alone, Edward Scissorhands, The Last of the Mohicans and Die Hard 2. Birnbaum is an American Film Institute trustee and served as the co-artistic director of the institute for two years.

KEVIN FRAKES (Executive Producer) is the CEO of PalmStar Media, a motion picture finance and production company. Frakes founded PalmStar in 2001 while an undergraduate at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he received a BFA in film and television production. Frakes also has an MBA from Yale University. Film credits include Celeste & Jesse Forever, John Wick, Sing Street, Split and John Wick: Chapter 2.

Frakes lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Before his career as a cinematographer, MICHAEL GIOULAKIS (Director of Photography) studied the trumpet and earned a degree in fine arts at Florida State University. He’s been shooting feature films since 2010 and his latest, a social horror-thriller titled Us directed by Jordan Peele, will be released by Universal Pictures this March.

Gioulakis shot Under the Silver Lake, directed by David Robert Mitchell, with whom he also made It Follows. He was nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for It Follows and the $2 million-budget film took in over $20 million at the box office.

Other credits include M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 psychological thriller Split. He also shoots commercials for high-end clients such as Samsung and IBM.

Gioulakis is currently working on Shyamalan’s untitled series for Apple.

CHRIS TRUJILLO (Production Designer) is a New York-based production designer with a background in fine arts. He cut his art-department teeth in the world of television commercials and music videos. He transitioned into feature film as an art director and set decorator on a number of critically acclaimed projects including Ti West’s The House of the Devil and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture. As a production designer, Trujillo has spent several years making films in New York City and on location all over the country, including Xan Cassavetes’ Kiss of the Damned, Sara Colangelo’s Little Accidents and Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Nerve. His most recent design work has been on the award-winning Netflix series Stranger Things with Matt and Ross Duffer, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2017.

Glass marks LUKE CIARROCCHI’s (Edited by) third feature film as lead editor for director M. Night Shyamalan. 2015’s The Visit was Ciarrocchi’s first feature film as lead editor. The low-budget horror-thriller went on to gross nearly $100 million worldwide and became one of 2015’s most profitable films. His second feature, 2017’s Split, would open at No. 1 at the box office and stayed there for three weekends in a row. In the end grossing nearly $300 million on a $9 million budget, Split would be recognized by many critics awards and launch the Unbreakable universe, Shyamalan’s ahead-of-its-time comic book drama released in 2000, back into the pop-culture consciousness teeing up both films’ culmination and conclusion in Glass. It’s a dream come true for Ciarrocchi to be a part of this wholly original trilogy, since the original film Unbreakable was given to him by his eldest brother Bruno when he was just 18 years old and preparing to start film school. It would become a cornerstone of his film education and now a cornerstone of his career.

PACO DELGADO (Costume Designer) has earned Academy Award^®, BAFTA, Critics’ Choice, Costume Designers Guild and Satellite Award nominations – among other accolades – for his films, The Danish Girl and Les Misérables with director Tom Hooper.

He costumed M. Night Shyamalan’s chilling schizophrenic thriller Split, which starred James McAvoy. His fantastical designs can be seen in the Ava DuVernay-directed Walt Disney Pictures’ adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic novel “A Wrinkle in Time.” He recently costumed for director Jaume Collet-Serra on Jungle Cruise, another Disney collaboration, and is in production with frequent collaborator Tom Hooper on Cats.

Delgado designed writer/director Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education and The Skin I Live In for which he received a Goya Award nomination. He won Goya, Gaudí and European Film Awards for his costume designs on the black-and-white film Blancanieves (Snow White) for writer/director Pablo Berger. His work on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, which starred Javier Bardem, earned him an Ariel Award nomination. He collaborated with writer-director Álex de la Iglesia on 800 Bullets. His other credits include The 33 for director Patricia Riggen, which starredAntonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche, and The Brothers Grimsby, directed by Louis Leterrier, and which starred Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong.

In addition to his many feature-film accomplishments, Delgado is also a prolific costume designer for opera and theater productions. Drawing inspiration from the fashions of Greece, Rome, the Spanish Court of Philip II and the 1930s, Delgado counts among his many influences: Velázquez, Goya, Ingres, Manet, Picasso, Rothko, Bill Viola, Murnau, Max Ophüls, Renoir, Billy Wilder, Preminger and Woody Allen, as well as Bach, Philip Glass, Shakespeare and Calderón de la Barca.

Based in Madrid, Spain, Delgado is fluent in English, Spanish, Catalan, French and German. He earned a degree in physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid before going on to study set and costume design at Institut del Teatre in Barcelona.

Delgado is a member of the Spanish cinema syndicate TACE and is represented by DDA.

WEST DYLAN THORDSON (Music by) is a composer and bandleader who got his start in the Twin Cities music scene before moving to New York with a developing career as a composer of film scores. After leading the band A Whisper in the Noise for many years, he caught his first big break when M. Night Shyamalan featured his version of Bob Dylan’s classic “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at the end of his film Lady in the Water.

Though Thordson’s move to New York was meant to be temporary, lasting only until the end of working on the film Foxcatcher, his rise in the ranks of film composers continued in 2015 when he scored every episode of the HBO hit series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. A consummate collaborator who has now worked with some of the biggest names in music, he has also developed a signature style and distinct way of recording instruments.

Other film credits include Caitlyn Greene’s upcoming August, Rachel Lambert’s In the Radiant City, David O. Russell’s Joy and Hank Bedford’s Dixieland.  Documentary credits include Every Day, The Atomic States of America and The Art of the Steal.

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