Trivia / Glass (2019)

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• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Samuel L. Jackson adored playing Elijah Price, and would ask "When are we making that motherfucking sequel?" whenever he ran into Shyamalan.
  • Bruce Willis similarly signed on to the movie before even reading the script.
• Channel Hop: Partially - after hopping from Disney to Universal for Split, the franchise goes back to Disney for international distribution while staying with Universal for the US and Canada (see Network to the Rescue) as well as China (through Perfect World Pictures).
• Dyeing for Your Art: James McAvoy has always been in good shape (as his breakthrough role in Wanted demonstrated), but his physique as "The Beast" in the previous film was either filmed in the dark or portrayed through the clever use of body doubles. Here? McAvoy worked with a trainer counting macros and beefed up considerably for Glass. It is most noticeable in his "Patricia" personality, as he is much bulkier in the femme attire than before.
• Easter Egg: The first security camera to show David Dunn at the institution was labeled H20.
• Missing Trailer Scene: There's a handful of scenes featured in the trailers that aren't in the final film. One of them is a few shots of The Beast seemingly preaching to some of inmates, hugging one of them and cackling seen in the final trailer and a scene of Dunn talking with a waitress seen in the first trailer. M. Night Shyamalan has mentioned the original cut of the film was three hours long (a whole 50 minutes longer than the finished film), so it's possible these scenes ended up in the cutting floor (and may be seen someday in a director's cut of some kind).
• Network to the Rescue: Under normal circumstances, this would be a nightmare of red tape to pass through because Unbreakable and Split were produced by different studios. Instead, this is the first ever film co-production between Universal and Disney, who have been heated rivals in both the film and theme park businesses for more than half a century. Prior to this film, most Universal/Disney co-productions were relegated to television, most notably Monk. Reportedly, Disney had no problem letting Split introduce David Dunn into The Stinger, so long as they had some input on a full sequel.
• International Coproduction: Between American studios Universal and Disney (through Buena Vista International) and Chinese company Perfect World Pictures, Universal's Chinese partner at the time.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The original script for Unbreakable included Kevin as an emerging villain for David to face against, but Shyamalan could never make it work within the confines of a single movie. Thus Kevin ended up split off into his own movie, with this film as the culmination of the original idea.
  • Several of the flashback scenes are actually made from unused footage for Unbreakable. Some of these scenes were already available as deleted scenes on the Unbreakable DVD.
• Role Reprise: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark, and Charlayne Woodard reprise their roles 19 years after Unbreakable. Willis already reappeared as Dunn in a small cameo at the end of Split in 2017, which established a Shared Universe with Unbreakable.
• Sequel Gap: The film is a sequel to Unbreakable and came out 19 years after the latter.
• Troubled Production: Following Bruce Willis' retirement from acting and aphasia diagnosis in 2022, several insiders confirmed long standing rumors that Willis' cognitive decline was already in full swing during the production of this movie. As a result, the Overseer wears a hood for most of the movie so that Willis could be easily fed lines via an ear piece or replaced with stand ins or stunt doubles. Heavy editing also had to be used since Willis could not remember his lines.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, the Ancient Conspiracy of Cape Busters did not exist, and in its place was a secret division of the US government. This was changed because it would have come off as validation of real world conspiracy theories about "the Deep State" that had gained traction in recent years.
  • Also, David Dunn originally was meant to survive, but Shyamalan decided it would be more effective if all three of the super-powered characters died and the loved ones they each left behind were united by it.
  • The movie was intended to contain a reference to The Visit, retroactively making it part of the Unbreakable-Split-Glass series as well (the planned scene was about two patients of the mental hospital, who were the same persons who served as villains in The Visit — a major reveal in the latter tells both characters aren't who they pretend to be but escaped mental patients).

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