The Lady in the Water has no twist ending. Seriously. And to prove it, M Night Shymalan is reading you the children’s book he has written to go with the film. Lady in the Water began as a bedtime story he told his children, and while the movie is an expansion of the tale, the book is closer to something Dave Davis would read to your kids if you had appalling taste in babysitters. "The storybook is based on the actual bedtime story that I told my own kids, so it skews younger than the movie," says Shyamalan. "The movie is kind of intense and I really didn’t hold back in terms of the suspense. But hopefully, the way the book is written, it can be something a 4- or 5-year-old can enjoy reading with their parents."
I have a copy of the book, and it’s really nicely illustrated. I’ve also seen the film, and while I’m not supposed to talk about it much, I will tell you that it’s Night’s best movie since The Sixth Sense, and that despite the marketing campaign which is selling it as scary, the movie is actually very sweet and quite funny in parts. For all of you college student types it’s also an interesting meta-examination of storytelling.
Anyway, to the point of all this – Amazon.com has an exclusive video of M Night reading from the book, and commenting on it. The footage will be there through the movie’s release on July 21. The book will be out June 21. Click here to check out the footage.