20 facts you might not know about 'Signs'

The director watched the 2000 film You Can Count On Me, and apparently, he was quite a fan. In fact, he was such a fan that he cast two actors from that film for Signs. Rory Culkin was cast to play Morgan, the son of Mel Gibson’s Graham, and Mark Ruffalo was cast as Graham’s brother, Merrill.

We mentioned Ruffalo, and if you’ve seen the film, you know he’s not actually in it. Unfortunately, he had to have surgery that left him unable to perform in the movie. One week before filming began, Ruffalo was replaced by Joaquin Phoenix.

Shyamalan often sets his films in Pennsylvania, specifically Philadelphia, and Signs is no different. However, the rural setting of Signs meant that Philly was out of the running. The scenes at the Hess house and in the cornfield were shot on the campus of Delaware Valley University in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The agricultural college had 40 acres of farmland for the production to use.

Shyamalan is not shy about casting himself in his own films, and not always in small cameos. In Signs, he plays a secondary but significant role as Ray, the veterinarian who is responsible for the death of Graham’s wife, Colleen.

The artwork in the book about aliens in the movie? Shyamalan didn’t have to go far to find the person to do that work. All the art was done by the director’s daughter, Saleka.

Shyamalan had acres of farmland to work with when shooting Signs, but he easily could have created the crop circles with CGI. However, the director wasn’t keen on using CGI and had the crop circles actually created in the corn.

We mentioned Shyamalan played Ray in Signs. Apparently, that came as news to his movie’s star. Gibson did not realize that Shyamalan was acting in the film until he arrived to shoot their scenes together.

Signs is simple and intriguing as a movie title, especially for a movie about aliens. It was not the only name Shyamalan thought of, though. He also considered The Alien Bulletin and Visitors as a title before opting for Signs.

Shyamalan was riding high when Signs was in production, and he had some ideas for the movie poster that he brought to the table. For starters, he didn’t want Gibson featured on the poster, since he considered the movie an ensemble story — not a starring turn for Gibson. Additionally, he didn’t want The Sixth Sense mentioned on the poster at all, even though it was a hit and his calling card. This was its own film, and Shyamalan wanted it treated like that.

When Shyamalan was first writing the film, the character of Graham was older. In fact, it was offered to Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood. Both turned it down, and eventually, Shyamalan ended up with Gibson, making the character younger than he was written.

The Hess family are being tormented by extraterrestrials in Signs, but Shyamalan didn’t necessarily turn to alien films to shape his story. The director had the cast watch Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds several time during production for inspiration.

Abigail Breslin was nominated for an Oscar as a kid for Little Miss Sunshine. She’s gone on to costar in movies such as Zombieland, August: Osage County, and Stillwater as well. Her first movie, though, was Signs, making this her film debut.

James Newton Howard had composed the scores for The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, so he had working experience with Shyamalan. Maybe that’s why the director felt comfortable with Howard getting to work early. That is to say, Howard started scoring the film before it had begun shooting. Instead, he was going off of Shyamalan’s storyboards.

Gibson and Phoenix could be brothers, though you could also say that Gibson is old enough to be Phoenix’s dad. Gibson is 19 years older than Phoenix in real life, even though they play siblings in the film.

It’s been proven time and time again, starting with Jaws, that less can be more with horror movie monsters. For the first 90 minutes of Signs, you only see the aliens for a total of 11 seconds. By the time the movie has ended, they’ve been on screen for roughly 90 seconds total.

We barely see the aliens, but in the director’s first vision, we wouldn’t have seen them at all. That’s because originally he wanted the aliens to be invisible. However, he couldn’t find a special effects process that worked for him, so he nixed the idea.

Signs was largely well received, but some did note that it was perhaps a bit odd that aliens who are hurt by water would come to a planet that’s covered in water. For whatever reason, Shyamalan decided to do two films in a row where characters had water as their proverbial kryptonite. In Unbreakable, Bruce Willis’ character’s weakness is also water.

Some movies are a slog for the directors. Just think of Francis Ford Coppola and Apocalypse Now. That wasn’t the case for Shyamalan when it came to Signs. He has said that it was the easiest film of his to write and direct.

When the Hesses hide in the basement, Graham says it used to be used to store coal. This may be a reference to the iconic extraterrestrial story War of the Worlds. In that book, the main character hides from the aliens in a coal shed.

Signs was before Shyamalan’s career took a turn toward infamy (shout out to The Happening), so there was excitement for its release. It made $60 million its first weekend, the largest opening of Mel Gibson’s career. All in all, it made $408.2 million worldwide against a budget of $72 million. It’s still the director’s second-highest-grossing film behind The Sixth Sense.