Troubled Waters?

To be honest, I have absolutely no desire to see writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, Lady in the Water.

After being disappointed by his last three pictures--The Village (2004), Signs (2002), and Unbreakable (2000), I have given up getting excited about his work...Three Strikes and all that stuff. In my opinion, this new movie looks like its gonna be pretty awful, based on the trailers anyway...A creature killing Mermaids? Yikes!! Sheesh! I'm a fan of actor Paul Giamatti but really. I suppose it could be worse--In his 411 column for today, Roger Friedman of Fox News.Com basically validates my suspicions about "Lady"

There are plenty of revelations in Michael Bamberger’s new book about director M. Night Shyamalan. The strangest is that in his new film, "Lady in the Water," Shyamalan briefly considered replacing Oscar nominee and indie-film favorite Paul Giamatti with … Kevin Costner. He even checked his availability at one point. Right away, you know something is off with Shyamalan.

You know the name M. Night Shyamalan from the third film he directed, “The Sixth Sense.” It was a sleeper for Disney and Bruce Willis, going on to make millions and enter the cultural vernacular, thanks to the line uttered by Haley Joel Osment: “I see dead people.”

Disney went with Shyamalan in a big way. They next made “Unbreakable,” which was a dud, and “Signs,” which ripped off Alfred Hitchcock.

More recently came “The Village,” another flop that brought all of us press to a premiere in Brooklyn that was scary only for how long it took to get a cab home.

The biggest surprise at the time was not in the film, but that Michael Eisner — who was then in a lot of tumultuous situations — attended it.

But Disney isn’t stupid. They got out of making “Lady in the Water” by offering the director only $60 million in all. Shyamalan declined, and now Warner Bros. will release the film on Friday. The budget was $75 million.

No one I’ve talked to likes this movie. Two nights ago, Warner Bros. held a premiere at the American Museum of Natural History and banned all columnists from attending. One reporter from The New York Times was invited, but she was instructed not to speak to the press.

Even Ron Howard, father of star Bryce Dallas Howard, skipped the event, a rarity for him. He must have been tipped off.

Surprisingly, only Variety and the Hollywood Reporter were allowed to cover the premiere.

After all, the Variety reviewer, Brian Lowry, said "Lady in the Water" was “a ponderous, self-indulgent bedtime tale. Awkwardly positioned, this gloomy gothic fantasy falls well short of horror, leaving grim theatrical prospects beyond whatever curiosity the filmmaker's reputation and the mini-controversy can scare up.”

Yikes!

The Hollywood Reporter was kinder, but eventually Kirk Honeycutt gets around to the business at hand. “The film utterly fails,” he concludes.

Whoops!

Warner Bros. owns up to the $75 million budget for “Lady,” which probably means $100 million, with another $50 million for prints and advertising. That’s a $150 million write-off if they can’t convince audiences that early reviews are wrong.

Of course, the studio is still wrangling with the “Superman Returns” dilemma, as the failed blockbuster peters out around $170 million domestically.

But now things get interesting. Last night, Disney fired Nina Jacobson, the executive who almost made “Lady.” This is on the eve of the publication of Bamberger's new book about Shyamalan called “The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale,” which describes how the movie was planned, and how it ultimately switched studios.

Jacobson doesn't have the greatest taste — she made the Kate Hudson movie “Raising Helen.” But according to Bamberger’s book, she at least confessed early on, after reading the sixth draft of “Lady,” that she had no idea what it was about.

Now the ball is in Warner's court — and if “Lady” becomes a total disaster, the Warner Bros. crowd may be looking for their own scapegoat. The method would be easy — see if anyone can explain the film.

Six drafts and Jacobson was still in the dark...

It's such a shame, Shyamalan showed some genuine film making skill and gained prowess with 1999's The Sixth Sense and now look where he finds his career, teetering and ready to fall off a cliff.