Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-director-who-was-once-called-the-next-spielberg/
In the summer of 2002, a single magazine cover did something that rarely happens in Hollywood. It didn’t just praise a filmmaker, it crowned him. The claim was bold, the timing was deliberate, and the pressure it created would follow one man for the next two decades.
What followed was a career that swung from box office triumph to public ridicule and back again, a story that still gets cited whenever critics want to warn young directors about the dangers of early hype. It is a story with real numbers, real flops, and an ending that nobody expected.
A magazine cover that changed everything
The director in question is M. Night Shyamalan, and the cover that started it all ran in Newsweek on August 5, 2002, just before the release of his fifth feature, Signs. In the week before his fifth feature film was released, a picture of the director filled the cover of the August 5, 2002 edition of Newsweek, and the magazine claimed him to be “The Next Spielberg” and suggested he was Hollywood’s Hottest New Storyteller. It was an extraordinary claim to make about someone with only a handful of films to his name.
Shyamalan later admitted the comparison rattled him more than people realized. He told Allentown’s Morning Call that it was such a big deal for him that he was actually on the edge of being physically sick that day, recalling meeting Spielberg for the first time while promoting…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-07-15 12:39:00
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