Following up a success like 1999’sThe Sixth Sensehad to be a daunting task forM. Night Shyamalanand Buena Vista Pictures, which distributed his big word-of-mouth sensation and was set to release his next film.The Sixth Sensebecame the second-highest-grossing film of 1999 after netting $672 million globally, and was even an awards season player, earning six Academy Award nominations. For his next film, Shyamalan wanted to do something very different, which led to the director and the studio not seeing eye to eye on the film’s marketing.
Released in 2000,Unbreakablewas intended to be Shyamalan’s version of a superhero origin story, but the director revealed that the studio was afraid to market the film like a comic book movie and instead tried to make it look like a horror thriller, much likeThe Sixth Sense. During a chat withGQto promote his latest film,Trap, Shyamalan went into great detail as to why the studio executives at Buena Vista Pictures were afraid to marketUnbreakableas a comic book movie.
Unbreakable
Although the market is flooded with comic book movies now, many of which have been massively successful, that wasn’t exactly the case whenUnbreakablewas set to hit theaters. Films likeBladeandX-Menwere the exception and not the rule back then, so the studio was hesitant. Instead, they opted to promote the film as if it wassimilar toThe Sixth Sense, a move that was made easier sinceBruce Williswas headlining Shyamalan’s follow-up as well.
“If you deny what it is because you’re afraid of it being different, then you’re stealing all of its strength. They were like, ‘We had one of the biggest movies of all time and the same two people are making another movie. Let’s make it look like that movie.’ As opposed to what it was, which was the beginning of an entire genre. They didn’t realize it because they were too scared to say the words ‘comic book.'”
The Marketing Made Unbreakable Look Like a Horror Film
If you happen to remember the marketing campaign forUnbreakableor want to take a quick trip to YouTube, it’s clear that the studio did a bit of bait and switch when it came to promoting the film. The trailers give off the impression that the movie has horror elements and doesn’t really allude to the project essentially being a superhero origin story. If audiences were hoping for another film similar toThe Sixth Sense, Shyamalan feels they were left a little disappointed at the time of the film’s initial release.
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“Other people were coming and going, ‘That wasn’t scary!’ And I was like, ‘‘Who said it was going to be that? Who said it was going to be scary? And do, [I learned] a really interesting lesson about, if I’m going to be the purveyor of original stories for my life, I have to get partners that understand that we’re going to reinvent every single time, and we should celebrate that.”
Unbreakablefollows David Dunn (Willis), a man who is not only the only survivor of a devastating train crash, but he also escaped the incident with no physical injuries. Soon, David realizes that he has superhuman abilities and this puts him in the sights of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a disabled comic book store owner who begins to manipulate David for his own gains. The film also stars Robin Wright and Spencer Treat Clark.
While the film wasn’t as critically or financially successful asThe Sixth Sense, registering a 70 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and grossing $248.1 million globally on a $75 million budget, the movie has gone on to be reevaluated favorably as one of Shyamalan’s very best films. Revisionist reviews have also pointed out, as Shyamalan intended, that the film is one of the early examples of the emerging superhero genre at the time, with some feelingUnbreakablewas ahead of its time in many ways.
Unbreakablecan currently be streamed on Max and Hulu.
