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Shot locations of M. Night Shyamalan
From Chennai in India to Philadelphia in the United States, follow in the footsteps of the legendary director.
University of Madras – Praying with Anger
Navalar Nagar, Chepauk, Triplicane, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
At his mother’s request, Dev Raman (M. Night Shyamalan) is participating in an academic exchange program between the United States and India. He left to study at Madras University, located in the city of Chennai. For his very first feature film, the director chose to move to his native India. And if he opted for the city of Chennai for his filming, it was not by chance since his maternal grandparents lived in this city. Founded in 1857, the University of Madras is one of the three oldest institutions in India along with Calcutta and Bombay.
Cole Sear’s House – Sixth Sense
2302 St Albans Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) lives in this house in Philadelphia. In most of his films, M. Night Shyamalan shoots in Philadelphia, his childhood city. The director also makes an appearance in the film as Dr. Hill. M. Night Shyamalan held on to this cameo in a doctor’s coat, the job his father predestined him for. It was his mother who pushed him to continue in the movies.
Franklin Field – Unbreakable
235 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
David Dunn (Bruce Willis) works in this Philadelphia stadium built in 1895. The Penn Quakers football team is based there and, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), it is the oldest football stadium in the United States still in operation. Originally, Unbreakable was to be a trilogy that the director later abandoned. M. Night Shyamalan will wait for Split then Glass to succeed in making his original idea come true.
House – Signs
Delaware Valley University, 700 East Butler Avenue, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA
Strange crop circles appear in the Hess family field. They’re predicting an imminent arrival of aliens. Impossible to reach the house, it was built on the land of Delaware Valley University, a private agricultural university. While M. Night Shyamalan plays a small part in the film, he also brings his own daughter into it. The drawings of Bo Hess (Abigail Breslin) are actually those of Saleka Shyamalan.
Village – Le Village
Cossart Road, Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, USA
The village in which the community lives was entirely built on an 80-hectare field on Cossart Road in Chadd’s Ford. The estate belonged to the company HG Haskell, a supplier of giant pumpkins. This route was chosen by M. Night Shyamalan, knowing that it is the subject of many legends in the region such as satanic cults or demonic apparitions. The construction of the village took two and a half months of work, 24 hours a day.
Jardin des Tuileries – Phenomena
Place de la Concorde, 75001 Paris
The wave of suicides seems to have finally died down in the United States. Only a few days later, the terrible events started again, this time in the Tuileries Gardens in France. There are many times when studios ask directors to slow down and revise their scripts. This time, Twentieth Century Fox asked M. Night Shyamalan to go further, even to make his film R-rated (forbidden to children under 17 years old not accompanied by an adult). A news that excited the director.
Volcano – After Earth
Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica
Many scenes, including those of the volcano, were filmed in Costa Rica. Will Smith wasn’t very comfortable being so close to him. In an interview with Allociné, the actor confided “They put me near a volcano and told me not to worry because he hadn’t been active for 14 months, but that didn’t really reassure me! I had a lot of fun shooting those scenes, but it was still quite difficult to run up it because I was afraid it would erupt at any moment”. While the film divided many critics, it was a commercial success, earning $235 million at the box office.
Grandparents’ house – The Visit
3049 Merlin Road, Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, United States
Rebecca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) visit their grandparents for the very first time. The little stay in the country will quickly turn into a nightmare. The splendid house is actually an equestrian centre specialising in the training of competition horses. M. Night Shyamalan took advantage of his salary received for After Earth to produce this feature film himself and thus be in total freedom. It was a winning bet, with a budget of $5 million and a worldwide box office gross of $97 million.
Philadelphia Zoo – Split
3400 West Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
The Philadelphia Zoo is the home of The Beast, one of Kevin Crumb’s (James McAvoy) most dangerous personalities of all. He brings his victims there, including Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). M. Night Shyamalan was inspired by a true story for its character and plot, that of Billy Milligan. Nicknamed “the man with 24 personalities”, he was arrested for at least three rapes before being tried and found not responsible for his crimes because of his dissociative identity disorder. This zoo is the first one created in the United States. It was inaugurated in 1859, but because of the Civil War, it was not opened to the public until 1874.
Comic Shop – Glass
Ontario Street Comics, 2235 East Ontario Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
If the asylum is the most striking place in the film, the comic book store is the most accessible. Already visible in Incassable, this shop comes back here in cameo to remind us that this film is part of a trilogy. The outside doesn’t look good, but it is the largest comic bookstore in Philadelphia. The shooting was completed in just 39 days, after the crew visited many places in the city to film the exteriors.
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Cult! music: 100 mythical music places [French Edition]
Embark immediately on an exhilarating world tour with some of music’s most iconic bands and artists!
Head to Melbourne, Australia for a stroll along AC/DC Lane before crossing the iconic Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in the company of The Beatles. Visit Janis Joplin‘s home in San Francisco and find out how Johnny Cash ended up playing his greatest hits to a crowd of prisoners in San Quentin. Travel the winding roads of Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and stop in Japan to catch up with Deep Purple, Phil Collins and Daft Punk. Drive down the Tina Turner Highway before entering some of the most legendary studios in music history. Go back to the troubled origins of Billie Holiday and make a pact with Robert Johnson at the famous crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Embark immediately on an exhilarating world tour with some of music’s most iconic bands and artists! Relive the Jimi Hendrix concert on the Isle of Wight before paying tribute to Bob Marley in Jamaica.
Produced by a team of pop-culture specialists and enhanced by numerous anecdotes, Cult! musictells the secrets of the places that made the history of music.
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By Anthony Thibault
From the "Casimir generation", Anthony has kept (in addition to a passion for Goldorak) a taste for inventive images, experimentation and curiosity. Passionate about travel and pop culture, he co-founded Fantrippers with Nicolas Albert to share his passion with as many people as possible.