Universal San Diego Comic-Con panel moderator Yvette Nicole Brown turned a few heads when she announced M. Night Shyamalan as the director of “the film that reignited the superhero versus supervillain trend, Unbreakable.” But while it may not have directly inspired trends the way Iron Man did, you might be able to thank marketing for that. When Unbreakable was first coming out, Disney told Shyamalan”they couldn’t mention the words ‘comic book’ or ‘superhero’ because they were fringe.”

Shyamalan found the overall reaction to Unbreakable “disheartening,” feeling that if he could have promoted it as a superhero movie, people would have been more willing to accept it. But when he started doing low-budget horror again, he recalled Kevin Wendell Crumb, who was in the original script for Unbreakable, but made it “too unwieldy.” That’s how Split came about–and James McAvoy was cast because Shyamalan ran into him at a Comic-Con party.

And then he asked Disney if he could “do something special at the end [of Split]” and they did, allowing that Bruce Willis cameo. That led to Glass, in which David Dunn (Bruce Willis), Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) and Crumb are in a mental institution…and the bad guys team up.

“I don’t think this will ever happen again,” he told the crowd, “two studios sharing IPs.” But of the trailer, for the new sequel to both films, and its direct mention of superheroes, Shyamalan says “Everybody else caught up to you guys.”

Are you excited for Shyamalan’s real-world superhero series to continue? Let us know in comments.