Lady in the Water
2006 film by M. Night Shyamalan
Lady in the Water is a 2006 American urban fantasy drama film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who produced with Sam Mercer. The film features the starring cast of Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard with Bob Balaban, Jeffrey Wright, Sarita Choudhury, Freddy Rodriguez, Bill Irwin and Jared Harris in supporting roles. Produced by Legendary Pictures and Blinding Edge Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, the film's plot concerns the superintendent of an apartment complex in Philadelphia who discovers a young woman in the building's swimming pool. Gradually, he and his neighbors learn that she is a water nymph (or Narf) whose life is in danger from a vicious and wolf-like mystical creature called a Scrunt that tries to keep her from returning to her watery "blue world".
Lady in the Water was released on July 21, 2006. It is Shyamalan's first film not distributed by Walt Disney Studios under their Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures labels since Wide Awake. The film received negative reviews, with criticism revolving around the self-indulgence with which Shyamalan cast himself in the film, the lack of consistency and the film's characterization. The film was additionally a financial failure grossing $72.8 million against a $70 million production budget. At the 27th Golden Raspberry Awards, Lady in the Water received a quartet of nominations for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay and won a pair for Worst Director, and Worst Supporting Actor for Shyamalan.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lady in the Water” as 2006 film by M. Night Shyamalan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2006 film by M. Night Shyamalan. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q621529. VIAF identifies the subject as 308156863. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lady in the Water” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.