M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 psychological horror film Split stars James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley and was written, directed, and produced by him. The plot revolves around a man with 24 personalities who kidnaps and imprisons three adolescent girls in a remote underground facility.
On November 11, 2015, principal photography commenced in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On September 26, 2016, the film premiered at Fantastic Fest, and Universal Pictures distributed it in the United States on January 20, 2017.
The film garnered mostly good reviews, with critics praising McAvoy’s acting and applauding Shyamalan’s direction. Some mental health experts blasted the movie for allegedly stigmatizing mental illness. The split was a box office hit, collecting $278 million worldwide on a $9 million budget.
Split is a standalone sequel to M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 film Unbreakable, however, it is not marketed as such. Instead, the reveal is saved for a sequence in which Bruce Willis reprises his performance from Unbreakable in an uncredited cameo. Split has been labeled the first ‘stealth sequel’ and the first solo supervillain origin film by critics.
Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy came to a close with the 2019 picture Glass, which reunited the casts and characters from both previous films.
Split grossed $138.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $140.2 million in other regions, for a global total of $278.5 million on a $9 million production budget.
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