M. Night Shyamalan slammed disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, labeling him the “biggest monster” in Hollywood.
The acclaimed horror director — who was hired by Weinstein’s former production company Miramax for his 1998 film, “Wide Awake” — looked back on working with Weinstein, 70, in the year before he was convicted of sex crimes.
“I started so young trying to make movies and failing, but they were reps,” the 52-year-old director told the Hollywood Reporter.
“I made ‘Wide Awake’ for Miramax and Harvey Weinstein. I went through my own personal hell being there, but it was trial by fire,” the “Split” director continued. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I started my career with the biggest monster that ever was.”
Shyamalan said that he “was in that room with him all the time while he would say crazy things, but it built me up because I’m a softie.”
He also said he felt like his “career was over” when he was working with Miramax and likened his situation there to playing basketball — if he ever got “elbowed” during a game, “I would become a different person.”
“Harvey, clearly, would elbow you, so that created a warrior mentality in this soft kid from a sweet, loving family,” Shyamalan explained.
Over time, he realized that he wanted to leave Miramax and sell his scripts elsewhere. The studio owned any rights to the projects it wanted to direct.
And so, Shyamalan was able to find a loophole in his contract that would allow him to work for another company.
“Miramax had some really tough contracts,” Shyamalan said. “But by some freak chance, they didn’t own my writing. It was an error by their legal department, so I said, ‘I’ll write the best screenplay ever and try to get out of here.'”
As for the screenplay he wrote, he looked to iconic suspense flicks like “Jaws,” “The Exorcist,” “Poltergeist” and “Alien” for inspiration.
He reveals that “everything just clicked” and thus, his famous film “The Sixth Sense” was born.
“The Sixth Sense” was released in 1999 and was bought by Miramax’s parent company, Disney. The feature starred Bruce Willis, Toni Collette and a young Haley Joel Osment.
Weinstein was accused of sexual abuse in 2017 by multiple women and was later sentenced to serve 23 years in prison.