"Lady" Grosses Just $6.9 Million First Day

From the M. Night Shyamalan Online Blog:
Bad news, to be sure. We're probably going to hear the words "flop" and "bomb" bandied about, though I think both are a bit premature, given that the film seems especially well-suited to succeed on DVD.

so it sucks?

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Hysterical.

No, meaning that even many who have criticized it have found the acting and production fantastic, and those who have enjoyed it have enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm loathe to use the term "cult following" so soon after its release, but there are already reasons to believe it may well develop one.

No, it did not suck. It was well acted and as always, it had the M Night signature moral of the story.

well i wont hold my breath....i think the man is a one trick pony...

Then you're a bit out of place, aren't you?

I've heard many criticisms of Night. Some, I will readily admit, make sense. I might not agree with them, but I can see how someone might. The "one trick pony" line, however, is utter nonsense. Anyone who says that either hasn't seen his films, and/or hasn't paid attention to the ones they've seen.

or they just have a different taste in movies to yours? possibly? no?

Not really, no. It doesn't add up, logically, unless they're misusing the phrase "one-trick pony," which implies that he's got a predictable forumula and keeps repeating it. That's demonstrably false; it's not really a matter of taste.

If you're using the phrase as an awkward way of saying that you only liked one of his films, then that's another matter.

no actually, i'm using it in the first sense...3 of the films i've seen use a pretty similar formula of surprise endings, it got old and predictable....

Which three are you referring to? If you're referring to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, then it simply isn't true. The Sixth Sense had a twist that fundamentally changed all we'd seen up to that point. Unbreakable had a twist that cast the motivations of a character in a new light, but did not change many of the film's basic events. And Signs didn't really have any sort of twist that was comparable to the other two films. It simply had answers to questions that were posed earlier in the film. I've never been able to fathom how people could even attempt to lump his films together based on such a flimsy similarity.

Ignoring all that, however, I still fail to see how simply having a twist at the end of a film would qualify as a "formula." It's one aspect of a hundred, and the twists are not especially similar in nature. You could even take the endings off of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and they're both still good movies.

well given the twists shock factor, they ARE pretty importaint aspects of the films, and what sticks in your mind the most...so now every film of his i see i'll be expecting a twist at the end....nothing worse than predictability....his themes DO change radically, but like i said...
and if you took out the surprise endings in the sixth sense and unbreakable you'd get a decent horror film and a complete drag of a film...

I think you're confusing a natural reaction with a reasonable one, here. Twists are bound to stick in our minds; they're designed to do so, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean it's fair to judge a film solely on the ingenuity and believability of its twist, either.

As for predictability; I only half-agree. I don't think his twists are predictable, but rather, the fact that he might employ one has been at times. That said, I feel he's done a fine job of confounding people who expected twists in the ways I've already described; by leaving one out of Signs, having two in The Village, and then having none in Lady in the Water. Man, if that's not unpredictability, what is?

Suffice to say, I disagree. I thought Unbreakable, especially, was so deliberate, and well-paced, and finely-crafted, that I was convinced I'd seen the best movie of the year even before we got our mini-shocker at the end of the film. And, seeing as how the twist was entirely consistent with what I'd seen before, I found it entirely natural, and still think it improves an already great film.

But, on this particular point, I'll certainly concede to the inevitability of subjectivity. Just not on the idea that he's a one-trick-pony.

The reason I think that Lady in the Water didn't perform as well as predicted is that people were confused with the plot of the movie. I know I was.

The first commercials about it said it was a "bedtime story" and people are like 'huh?' Then the following ads have these strange beasts and a wet chick.

What is the movie about? I think most people, myself included, were confused about what the movie is. And people don't pay to see something unless they know what it is.

And they used his name in the ads as a draw (which is smart), but I don't think M Night has built up the blindly faithful audience that would pay to see anything he's touched. There are very few people who have actually achieved that. Incuding:

-director/writer be Joss Whedon who has millions of people worldwide who would pay to see anything he had a hand in making. (sidenote, I will go see the new WonderWoman movie because he is writting it - but I don't like wonder woman). His movie Serenity did remarkably well as a result of him and his outrageously faithful fan base.

- Julia Roberts. Almost every movie she's made post-Pretty Woman has done well in theatres

- JK Rowling. A prediction on my part, but I have no doubt that her works following Harry Potter will find success (while not neccessarily at the same level) because of her name

There are many others, but I don't think M Night has built up that fanbase that is large enough to carry a movie to success.

FYI, just in case people may think I don't like M Night, Sixth Sense scared the bejeezes out of me and Unbreakable was very enjoyable.

Nah, Julia Roberts has had plenty of failures. Mona Lisa Smile, The Mexican, America's Sweethearts, I Love Trouble, etc.

I have not seen The Lady in the Water, but am I alone in feeling that the advertising was not very effective? I found the little girl voiceover to be very annoying, and the way the film is made to look dark and nebulous does not exactly make me want to go to the theaters.

Ow...burn.

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The Village left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. The trailers also, as has been stated, confused viewers into not understanding what the movie was supposed to be about. Even now, I have friends asking me if it's a scary movie about a ghost in the water.

Warner Brothers really didn't do a good job with marketing, and now the film is paying for it.

A shame too. I really enjoyed LITW.