When M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” was released in 2000, there wasn’t a Marvel Cinematic Universe. Honestly, outside of “Blade,” there weren’t any superhero films. Hell, “X-Men” came out the same year, which is seen as one of the first true superhero films of the modern era. So, you can imagine the studio behind “Unbreakable” didn’t know what to do with Shymalan’s film. Especially on the heels of the massive “Sixth Sense.”
In a new video from GQ, where M. Night Shyamalan discusses the various films he’s made over the years, the filmmaker talked about how the studio didn’t really know what to do with “Unbreakable” when it was released. Shyamalan said the studio was “too scared” to call it a superhero film, so they marketed it like a horror film such as “Sixth Sense.” That’s why the filmmaker believes it didn’t do as well as it could have.
“If you deny what it is because you’re afraid of it being different, then you’re stealing all of its strength,” Shyamalan said. “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.’”
“Unbreakable” stars Bruce Willis as a man who finds himself perfectly fine after a train crash that kills everyone aboard. He then meets another man, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who tries to convince him that he is a superhero.
At the time, because superhero films weren’t taken seriously, “Unbreakable” was marketed as a mystery thriller–almost a horror film–by the studio. This led to many people being upset over the false promise. Eventually, over time, especially as superhero films became more popular, “Unbreakable” found it’s audience years later. Then it was popular enough to spawn a trilogy of films, with “Split” and “Glass” following nearly two decades later.
You can watch Shyamalan break down other films he worked on below: