25 years on, M. Night Shyamalan recalls the moment The Sixth Sense went from unlikely hit to making box office history

On its 25th anniversary, director M. Night Shyamalan recalls the beautifully old-school way he discovered how The Sixth Sense went from unlikely success story to smashing all sorts of box office records.

"In those days, you used to call a phone number as a filmmaker and you would hear a recording where it would tell you what each movie grossed," Shyamalan tells 12DOVE and the Inside Total Film podcast during media for his upcoming release Trap.

"When they said the first Friday grosses, I was like ‘What?’ Because it was meant to do much less," Shyamalan recounted. "I called Bruce [Willis] or Bruce called me and said, ‘We won Friday.’ That’s so weird because no one thought we were going to [be the #1 film at the box office]."

A week later, Shyamalan made the same phone call to check on the grosses – and assumed a mistake had been made.

"I call the same number and it said $8 million [again]. I was like ‘Oh, shit. They didn’t re-do the tape’. Not realising that it didn’t drop. That’s never happened since Titanic."

Shyamalan continues, "Literally I told the family that they must have to put the tape in. I call back and it’s still [$8 million]... Someone called me and said you dropped 1% or something like that."

Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osmont, and Toni Colette, The Sixth Sense followed child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Willis) and his treatment of Osmont’s Cole – who harbors a dark secret.

It proved a winning formula at the box office, as it broke several records at the time. That included the biggest August domestic opening in history. The Sixth Sense also became only the second movie to gross $20m in each of its first five weekends, as well as later entering the top 10 highest-grossing films in the US and Canada with a taking of $293 million.

Famously, The Sixth Sense came bundled with an all-timer of a twist that turned M. Night Shyamalan into an overnight sensation. Malcolm had actually died during a confrontation with a former patient at the beginning of the film. You know the rest: ‘I see dead people’, with the iconic moment being parodied, pastiched, and immortalized into pop culture folklore ever since.

Listen out for our chat with M. Night Shyamalan on the upcoming episode of the Inside Total Film podcast, which is available on Apple, Audioboom, Spotify, and more. For more, check out our verdict on Shyamalan's latest with the Trap review.