FEW directors have suffered such extremes of reaction as M Night Shymalan, as great early success gave way to lousy reviews and poor box office.

The writer-director, who began making films in his home town of Philadelphia at ten, found fame and Oscar nominations with his I-see-dead-people thriller The Sixth Sense. His next three films – Unbreakable, Signs and The Village – showed him as a master of dramas with unexpected twists.

Then came Lady In The Water and The Happening. Reaction from critics and the public ranged from lukewarm to hostile.

His latest film, The Last Airbender, marks a complete change as he turns an animated TV series into a summer blockbuster.

But again, the reviews haven’t been good.

None of this seems to have dented Shymalan’s confidence, as he rejects the idea that early success leads to increased pressure on future projects.

“For me, I’m so isolated out there making movies. I close the door of the farm and write and come out with something,”

he explains during promotional duties for The Last Airbender.

“But my career began with Unbreakable.

That represents me in a huge way.

So, immediately they were like, ‘do you think it’s in the shadow of this (The Sixth Sense)? For me, Unbreakable was a better movie.

“I’m so incredibly lucky to make these original movies. When we made The Sixth Sense in 1999, the industry was all original material. Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, Magnolia, The Matrix, Blair Witch all came out that year. So every single movie that was dominating cinema was an original film-maker with an original point of view, and that’s clearly not the case today.”

HE doesn’t think about failure, possibly to his detriment, he admits.

He just enjoys telling stories, although every scenario carries pressure.

“It’s much more like every movie needs to be beautiful and fantastic for me. I hope the audience will see the beauty in it,” he adds.

If The Last Airbender succeeds at the box office, there are sequels to be made.

For the moment Shymalan is relinquishing total control and letting someone else write and direct a movie based on his stories.

“You know what happened is that I read a lot of stories. My hero, for my career, is Agatha Christie. I want to make 40 or 50 stories out of my head. She wrote 80 books and that’s impossible. But I want to make the stories that are in my head and have people say, ‘wow, this guy wrote all these stories’.

“When I come up with a movie idea, sometimes it comes with another idea, and they’re competing to be the movie I’m going to direct. I’ll flesh them out and have two journals full of notes.

“Eventually, one will represent me more at that moment. And so, I kept saying, ‘I’m definitely going to direct that’.

Then another idea would come while I was on the train or the plane, and I’d write it and do that next. So I decided I wouldn’t be able to direct these.”

The plan is to make a series of movies like the Twilight Zone. He’ll prepare the stories, produce the films and hire other film-makers to make them. The first one, Devil, was being made (by the Dowdle brothers) while he directed The Last Airbender.

“They’re coming at it from a different point of view, an edgier point of view. It gets me excited about film-making again.

When you see it, it’ll feel like one of my movies, but with a slightly different language to it, which is exciting.

“I’m finishing the script for the second one and working with some great writers to flesh it out.

“We did Devil in a New York screening room and the audience was screaming and jerking around. I was like, ‘damn, I should have made this myself’. But that’s the way I want to feel every single time we finish one. If I’m like, ‘good thing I didn’t make that movie’, that would be it.”

■ The Last Airbender (PG) is now showing in cinemas.

■ The Sixth Sense is on ITV1, 10.35pm, tonight.