Wide Awake (1998 film)
1998 film by M. Night Shyamalan
Wide Awake is a 1998 American comedy-drama film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and produced by Cathy Konrad and Cary Woods. Starring Denis Leary, Dana Delany, Joseph Cross, and Rosie O'Donnell, the film follows Cross as a ten-year-old boy who struggles with his grief and Christian faith after the recent loss of his grandfather.
Released by Miramax Films, it was Shyamalan's first release by a major studio after his independently produced debut Praying with Anger in 1992, and was originally shot in 1995, although creative differences between Shyamalan and executive producer Harvey Weinstein led to significant delays. Being released before Shyamalan's widely successful next film The Sixth Sense (1999), Wide Awake went mostly unnoticed upon release, receiving mixed reviews and becoming a box-office failure.
Plot
During his fifth grade year, ten-year-old Joshua A. Beal begins a personal search to find answers about life and death — a journey triggered by the passing of his beloved grandfather.
Josh attends Waldron Mercy Academy, a private Catholic boys' school in Philadelphia. He says that boys who wear a uniform do not smile much. His best friend Dave is often up to mischief, finding ways to cut class. Small for his age, he often gets picked on.
Very close to his grandfather, he misses him terribly.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2061070. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1998, 1992, 1995 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wide Awake (1998 film)” 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.