M. Night Shyamalan's 5 Favorite Movies All Have One Thing In Common

Getting a film made is far easier said than done. That's why most Hollywood movies are based on pre-existing material — both to try and speed up the process of generating a story itself, and to have some assurance that there's an audience for the story. This mentality has led to truly original movies becoming something of a rarity. Truth is, Hollywood has always looked to existing IP (intellectual property).What's new about today's situation is that the IP they're generally tapping tends to be of a short-form or experiential variety: either remakes, reboots, and legacy sequels to older movies, or TV shows, comic books, and video games.

In the early decades of cinema, however, the main source for adaptations was literature. Where comics, games, TV and other movies are all visual mediums and come pre-loaded with their own imagery, books are a covenant between the author and reader's imagination, making them particularly fertile ground to grow a visual adaptation from. They also don't need to conform to a strict runtime or page count. Filmmakers can pick and choose which elements from the book need to be (or can be) included in a film version, and can either condense or expand upon the story. It's with these choices that individual creativity can best blossom. In short: books are a spectacular resource for cinematic adaptations.

There are some people who fully recognize the impact novels have had on cinema, and one of them is filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes in 2013, Shyamalan revealed his five favorite films of all time, and they all had one thing in common: they're all based on books. This doesn't mean that Shyamalan picked stuffy Oscar bait, either. In fact, his picks double as an illustration of how the richness and raw potential of a book can lead to some of the greatest movies ever made.

Without further ado, the five movies that M. Night Shyamalan picked as his favorites were, in reverse order: "Rebecca," "Being There," "The Exorcist," "Jaws," and "The Godfather," with the filmmaker calling the latter his "favorite movie of all time." 

By the time Shyamalan got around to naming "The Exorcist" as his third favorite, he caught onto the pattern that was forming, exclaiming "these are all based on books, right?" Even before he had that epiphany, however, the filmmaker was locked in on the way his picks built upon the depth of their source material. For instance, while discussing "The Godfather," Shyamalan opined:

"It was the perfect confluence of the source material being so intimate and true, and having within its DNA, it just so happens, is an incredible plot in the most organic matter. It is so not contrived, or 'your IQ's dropping,' which is almost the case of all other combinations, right? In this one, it's inherently built into the life of these people. And there are stakes, there's threat, and that's just built in, so the source material had all of that."

While it's general knowledge that Mario Puzo's novel of "The Godfather" was a sensation prior to Francis Ford Coppola's film version, some folks may not be aware that the other movies mentioned are also based on books. Peter Benchley's "Jaws," William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist," Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There," and Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" were all best-sellers when first published, but it feels safe to say that the film versions of every one of these books have surpassed the novels themselves in the public consciousness. That's not to say these authors' work have been unfairly overlooked (in fact, every one of them save de Maurier were intimately involved with the making of the film versions), but rather to point out just how big an impact cinema can have on art and pop culture.

When it comes to how these novels inform Shyamalan specifically, it's not hard to see why the filmmaker reveres them, even without his quotes from the interview. The writer/director, who's now 16 movies into his career as of this year's "Trap," has built a filmography that demonstrates his dedication to a more classical style of filmmaking craft. Like Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock, Hal Ashby, William Friedkin and Steven Spielberg, Shyamalan clearly appreciates the idea of a constructed film: one which is made with care and attention paid to getting the most out of every element, regardless of whether or not the creative choices made are "appropriate" or "realistic." This can be seen in everything from Shyamalan's composition to his penchant for off-kilter dialogue, wherein he sacrifices realism for something more brazenly cinematic.

Although Shyamalan mostly makes original movies, his filmography does include a few adaptations. "The Last Airbender" and "Old" were generally ill-received, but 2023's "Knock at the Cabin," fared much better. Sure enough, while "Airbender" was based on an animated series, "Cabin" was based on the novel "The Cabin at the End of the World," by Paul G. Tremblay. Just like the directors who made his favorite films, Shyamalan took some creative license with his cinematic adaptation, allowing it to be successful as its own movie rather than be a bland retelling.

Who knows if enough has changed for Shyamalan in the past 11 years that he would revise this list of his favorite films, but it seems unlikely. Although people on social media scoff at various interviews with filmmakers about their favorite films, it's a question that gets at the core of a person's creative soul, and the answers can be both educational and illuminating.