Released on November 22nd 2000, Unbreakable, M Night Shyamalan's follow-up to his debut hit The Sixth Sense, follows security guard named David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis) who survives a horrific train crash with no injuries, leading to him discovering that he harnesses superhuman abilities, which in turn introduces him to comic book store owner Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson), who uses a wheelchair and turns out to be his nemesis.
The first installment in the Unbreakable film series (a.k.a. Eastrail 177 Trilogy), followed by Split and Glass, Unbreakable received mixed reviews upon release but is often quoted as one of the best examples of a superhero origin movie. On the anniversary of its release, here are five fast facts about Unbreakable...
1. Writer and Director M. Night Shyamalan always had Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in mind to play the roles of David Dunn and Elijah Price. Shyamalan approached Willis for the lead role whilst he was developing the script for Unbreakable during filming of The Sixth Sense, but it was Willis who talked Jackson into the part of Mr. Glass.
A chance meeting between the two friends (they'd previously starred together in Pulp Fiction, Die Hard With A Vengeance and Loaded Weapon 1) occurred at a casino in Casablanca while Jackson was on vacation and Willis was on a promotional tour for The Seige. Having just finished filming The Sixth Sense, he sung the praises of the then-unknown Shyamalan to Jackson and told him about the new script that was written for both of them.
2. Several scenes relating to Jackson's Mr. Glass character involve glass itself. As a newborn, he is primarily seen reflected in mirrors, and as a young child, he is seen reflected in a blank TV screen. When he leaves his calling card on the windshield of David Dunn's car, he is reflected in a glass frame in his art gallery.
When Jackson came onboard he requested his walking stick be made of glass to make his character more menacing. Jackson also suggested using purple as Mr. Glass's color, to David Dunn's green, primarily because purple is Samuel L. Jackson's favourite colour (a request he also made during filming on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, asking for his lightsaber to be purple).
3. Julianne Moore was cast as Audrey Dunn, David's wife, but dropped out of the film just prior to shooting after being offered the role of Clarice Starling in Hannibal. Robin Wright Penn was cast in her place.
4. M. Night Shyamalan makes a cameo appearance in Unbreakable, as he does in most of his films. He plays "Stadium Drug Dealer". Although that's the only title his character was given in the year 2000, Shyamalan has cameos in the subsequent films in the Unbreakable trilogy which are said to be as the same character. In Split, he plays the "Security Guard" from Dr. Karen Fletcher's apartment building, and in Glass, Shyamalan plays the same character although he's given the name "Jai", and it is in this film that it's implied that he is the same character David Dunn suspected as being a drug dealer from the stadium in Unbreakable.
5. Although 16 years separate Unbreakable and Split, a young Kevin Wendell Crumb, James McAvoy's character from the second film in the series, makes a brief cameo in Unbreakable.
Whilst walking outside the stadium a child and mother bump into David Dunn, causing him to sense something. The pair are simply credited as "Five-Year-Old Boy" and "Woman Walking By" and portrayed by Joey Hazinsky and Dianne Cotten Murphy, respectively. In 2018 M. Night Shyamalan confirmed the long held fan theory that they were younger versions of the characters Kevin Wendell Crumb and his mother Penelope Crumb from Split, which was confirmed again on screen in the 2019 film Glass.
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