It’s hard to believe 2024 marks 25 years since The Sixth Sense landed in theaters. This movie caused a huge stir and basically went viral before that was even a thing. Everyone was talking about it, especially the surprise twist that caught the world by surprise.
So much has changed over the past two and a half decades, but The Sixth Sense still holds up. It’s a scary movie, yes, but it’s also a cultural phenomenon that launched several careers in the movie business, including its creator, M. Night Shyamalan.
It was Shyamalan’s 29th birthday, August 6, 1999, when The Sixth Sense opened. Word of mouth spread quickly and within two weeks the film earned back its $40 million production budget and became a box office powerhouse. In the end, it brought in $672 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, second only to a little movie called Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace.
In honor of this year being the 25th anniversary of The Sixth Sense, let’s explore some of the lesser-known aspects of such an iconic film.
It took Shyamalan a whole year to perfect the script, and the entire concept shifted in the process
In an interview with Variety, Shyamalan revealed that his first draft was inspired by the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. The first script was a psychological thriller about Malcolm, a crime photographer, whose young son sees visions of the dead in his dad photographs. Shyamalan spent a year making edits, completing ten drafts total before settling on the current story about therapist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) and his patient, 11-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment).
As a side note, Shyamalan cast himself in the role of Cole’s pediatrician Dr. Hill, but he disliked his performance so much he cut most of it out during editing.
Donnie Wahlberg went way too method
Before this movie, Wahlberg was only known as a member of the boy band New Kids On The Block. Hoping to transition to acting, Wahlberg threw himself into the role of Vincent Grey, Malcolm’s patient with a mental health condition, losing over 40 pounds and refusing to shower for the five weeks leading up to production. In 2019, Wahlberg told The Hollywood Reporter that he starved himself, walked the city streets without a dime on him, and even slept in a Philadelphia park to get into the character’s head space.
Toni Collette was not psyched to be cast as Lynn Spear
Collette gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly in April 2023 wherein she revealed surprising feelings about landing the role. Fresh off her success in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding, the actress tried out for two separate movies: The Sixth Sense and Bringing Out The Dead, directed by Martin Scorsese. She was hoping for the Scorsese film, because come on … it’s Scorsese. Instead, she landed a part in then-unknown Shyamalan’s movie.
“[My agent] goes, ‘No, no, no, no, wait, you didn’t hear me. You’ve been offered The Sixth Sense.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh!’” she said with a hearty laugh. It’s a good thing she took the part; after all, she’s now one of the very few actresses to ever be nominated for a Best Actress in a Supporting Role Academy Award for a horror movie, which is virtually unheard of in the genre. That’s tough news for Marisa Tomei, who was also in the running for the role.
Collette wasn’t the only star reluctant about taking the part
Willis only appeared in The Sixth Sense as part of a settlement with The Walt Disney Studios. Years earlier, he caused Disney to lose $17.8 million on one of their movies. Rather than sue him, Disney worked out a deal in which Willis agreed to star in three movies at a reduced rate: Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, and The Kid.
In other casting news …
Michael Cera revealed in an interview with Esquire that he tried out for the role of Cole, but he “didn’t know [it] was about seeing dead people.” He watched the film when it came out and realized he’d said a line in an “upbeat” way, but it was actually an incredibly emotional moment. Oops! Child actor Liam Aiken was offered the role of Cole before Osment got it, but Aiken turned it down.
That’s not Collette’s real hair … and Bruce Willis has good taste
Collette showed up to her audition with a shaved head. As Shyamalan relayed to Variety, he knew he wanted her for the part immediately, but he wasn’t sure the studio would go for it. Thankfully, Willis had his back.
“She did such a beautiful job,” the director said of Collette’s audition. “I didn’t want to show the video to the studio for fear that they would be concerned with her appearance, and I said ‘I want to cast the woman from Muriel’s Wedding‘, and then Bruce backed me and said ‘Oh, I love Muriel’s Wedding,’ so we kind of got it without the studio seeing the audition, and I was so lucky.”
Willis had a wicked influence on his colleagues
The Fifth Element star loved to party! In his book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, the late Matthew Perry describes making The Whole Nine Yards with Willis. According to Perry, Willis went out every night but still showed up fresh and ready to shoot the next day. He was also a regular on the Los Angeles club scene, spinning records as a DJ late into the night. Who knew?
Shyamalan confirmed this fact with Variety. “Bruce definitely introduced me to the notion of partying and letting loose,” he said. “Back in those days, he was a big DJ and the parties were super fun. He definitely gave me my first hangover.”
Everyone was a bit creeped out during filming
Much of the film’s interiors were shot inside an old convention center in Philadelphia. Osment admits the large, vacant building had a bit of a Shining vibe, and castmate Mischa Barton, who played the poisoned child ghost Kyra Collins, says she’s “pretty sure that place was haunted. Like, actually haunted.”
Similarly, Collette told Slant Magazine in 2012 that she had “a couple of weird things happening” while shooting the movie. “In the hotel room I was staying at in Philadelphia, I started meditating a lot, and then I would wake up at night, roll over, and look at the clock, and it was always a repeated number—1:11, 3:33, 4:44. That started to really spook me.”
Even so, the child actors didn’t realize how scary the movie would turn out
Many of the actors said that working on The Sixth Sense felt like more of a family drama about grief than a horror movie. In a Reddit AMA, Osment told fans that despite the “disturbing subject matter” he found “something desensitizing (not necessarily in a negative way) about seeing the whole process of making a horror movie that prevents you from being too scared going forward.”
Similarly, Barton and Osment told Variety they used to play around the set all the time, often with Barton sporting a full face of ghostly makeup. Barton said she didn’t realize the film was scary until she brought her sister into post-production, and her sister “screamed at the top of her lungs” because of how scary it was.
The Sixth Sense joined a very small club
The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, which is totally unheard of in the horror genre. Only six horror films have ever been nominated for Best Picture: The Exorcist, Jaws, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Get Out. Of those, only The Silence of the Lambs actually won. Sadly, none of the actors in The Sixth Sense won an Oscar for their performance … which is criminal.
After 25 years, now’s a great time to refresh your memory about the film that made “I see dead people” one of the most iconic lines in film history. If so, you can stream The Sixth Sense on Disney+.
(featured image: Hollywood Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment)
