Trivia / The Sixth Sense

• Breakthrough Hit: For M. Night Shyamalan.
• Contractual Obligation Project: This was the second of three movies that Bruce Willis owed Disney, being followed by The Kid (2000), after he caused another production, Broadway Brawler, to be shut down, due to him firing the director. He was paid ten million dollars, half of his usual salary at the time ... and all this after the studio had had him do Armageddon (1998) for just three million, making up the money spent on Broadway before it was terminated.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: M. Night Shyamalan wrote the role of Malcolm Crowe with Bruce Willis in mind.
• Dawson Casting: Although Cole is supposed to be nine years old, Haley Joel Osment was eleven. Much more jarring in the case of Donnie Wahlberg whose character should have been nineteen at the beginning of the movie. And Wahlberg was twenty-nine. It shows.
• Dueling Works: In contest with Stir of Echoes.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Donnie Wahlberg lost forty-three pounds for the role of Vincent Grey.
• Fake American: Australian Toni Collette as Lynn, and British Olivia Williams as Anna.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: In the very first draft of the script, it was more of serial killer investigation thriller in a vein of Silence of the Lambs, and Malcolm was a crime photographer instead of therapist while Cole was his son who can see dead people. After ten rewrites, it became the script of the movie we know today.
• Orphaned Reference: When Malcolm realizes he's a ghost, there is an echo of the boy saying "I see people". The line "I see people" was not used in the final cut (he only says "I see dead people").
• Playing Against Type:
  • Bruce Willis, notably.
  • Donnie Wahlberg, then still primarily known for being in New Kids on the Block, appears in the opening scene as Malcolm's unstable patient.
• Star-Making Role: For Haley Joel Osment.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Claire Forlani and Marisa Tomei declined the role of Anna Crowe.
  • According to Michael Cera, this was the first film that he ever auditioned for. He read for the part of Cole, and the scene he did was the Magic Trick scene, but he later admitted that he did it too cheerfully; he had not read the entire script, so he didn't know that Cole was supposed to be an introverted and quiet boy.
  • French actress Beatrice Dalle (who's known for her appearance in Betty Blue and Inside (2007)) was planned to audition for Anna Crowe, but her possession of cocaine during the filming of Abel Ferrara's The Blackout in Miami has garnered her some legal trouble and denied a work permit in the US. This also explains why she doesn't get cast in American movies, despite being a well-known actress in her home country.

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