Shyamalan's Glass shot at Pennsylvania hospital
Filmmaker M Night Shyamalan used a former psychiatric hospital building in Pennsylvania as a set for his movie Glass.
By Nick Goundry 10 Jan 2019
Filmmaker M Night Shyamalan used a former psychiatric hospital building in Pennsylvania as a set for his movie Glass.
A follow-up to Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller Split, the film brings together James McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb, who has an extreme multiple-personality condition, with Bruce Willis’ vigilante hero The Overseer and Samuel L Jackson’s villain Mr Glass from Shyamalan’s 2000 thriller Unbreakable.
Much of the story takes place in a fictional facility called Raven Hill Hospital where the three characters are held by authorities.
Location manager Staci Hagenbaugh, a regular collaborator of Shyamalan’s, found the former Allentown State Hospital about 60 miles north of Philadelphia, where Shyamalan makes most of his films. The facility had been closed since 2010 after nearly a century of operating.
“We started making a list of which areas he really wanted to put in the movie,” says Hagenbaugh. “He found some areas that he loved and then wrote scenes especially for them.”
One of the story’s most visually-arresting settings is a pink-walled day room where the three main characters have group therapy sessions. The space was inspired by the actual decor of a real room in the old hospital but had to be recreated in a different part of the building when the original space proved unsuitable for filming.
Pennsylvania has a reputation as a film-friendly state, partly because of its base 25% filming incentive.
Recent high-profile productions have included A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood that stars Tom Hanks in the story of the late US TV presenter Fred Rogers. Boxing movie Creed and its sequel – both part of the Rocky franchise – also shot in the city.
Image: Jessica Kourkounis/Universal Pictures
Much of the story takes place in a fictional facility called Raven Hill Hospital where the three characters are held by authorities.
Location manager Staci Hagenbaugh, a regular collaborator of Shyamalan’s, found the former Allentown State Hospital about 60 miles north of Philadelphia, where Shyamalan makes most of his films. The facility had been closed since 2010 after nearly a century of operating.
“We started making a list of which areas he really wanted to put in the movie,” says Hagenbaugh. “He found some areas that he loved and then wrote scenes especially for them.”
One of the story’s most visually-arresting settings is a pink-walled day room where the three main characters have group therapy sessions. The space was inspired by the actual decor of a real room in the old hospital but had to be recreated in a different part of the building when the original space proved unsuitable for filming.
Pennsylvania has a reputation as a film-friendly state, partly because of its base 25% filming incentive.
Recent high-profile productions have included A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood that stars Tom Hanks in the story of the late US TV presenter Fred Rogers. Boxing movie Creed and its sequel – both part of the Rocky franchise – also shot in the city.
Image: Jessica Kourkounis/Universal Pictures
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