Shyamalan remembers a second instance that convinced him that his decision to hire Jackson seemed almost destined when he first met the actor on the set of "Shaft." "I couldn’t believe it when I stepped into his trailer … he is a comic book freak and knows everything there is to know about comic books. Without even knowing that about him, I had already finished the script and written his character as gallery owner who has a unique fascination with comic book art," explains Shyamalan. "It was just another one of those ‘coincidences’ that kept occurring, reassuring me I was going in the right direction."
And it wasn’t just the fact that he had a few comic books lying around that impressed Shyamalan. "Sam has an incredible knowledge about comics that is truly amazing," says Shyamalan. "There is a scene in the film where his character was going to be in the background and Sam just needed to ad-lib a little dialogue about different pieces of comic book art. It wasn’t even dialogue that you would really be able to hear necessarily, but take after take, Sam knew different facts and stories about comic book history that were amazing. One of the extras in the scene even came up to me that day and said ‘how does he know all that?’… It was really surreal."
Casting Robin Wright Penn even had its own special story of predestination. Although the filmmakers had always wanted her for the role, she initially had to turn the project down due to scheduling conflicts with another film she had already committed to. The filmmakers offered the role to another actress, who later decided to accept an offer on another film and dropped out. With the start of production quickly approaching, the filmmakers were faced with having to find another actress and decided to see if by any chance anything had changed with Robin Wright Penn’s schedule. Sure enough, the production date on her other project had suddenly moved and she was available. Ironically, Shyamalan now had his first choice for the actress he envisioned for the film.
Hiring director of photography Eduardo Serra was also something Shyamalan points to as an important decision that was somehow fated to happen. "I went to the video store one night but had no idea what I wanted to watch and remember just wandering around aimlessly to see if anything jumped out at me, and for some reason happened to rent ‘Wings of the Dove’," recalls Shyamalan. "It was during pre-production and I had been struggling a little bit about the look of the film and suddenly saw the exact kind of lighting I always loved and knew it was perfect. I ended up hiring Eduardo immediately, all because of renting the video. He was absolutely amazing and someone I hope to work with many, many times again in the future.
"It may just be a coincidence or a weird twist of fate," admits Shyamalan "but whatever you want to call it, all of these were an amazing set of circumstances that really gave me a strong sense that the film was definitely meant to be and enabled me to direct with a greater feeling of clarity and confidence."
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