Director Digital News

M. Night Shyamalan sat down for a retrospective interview with GQ magazine on the occasion of the release of his latest directorial effort, "Trap," and recalled that studio executives didn't want to market 2000's "Unbreakable" as a comic book movie. How times have changed. Shyamalan and star Bruce Willis were coming off the massive success of "The Sixth Sense," which grossed $672 million worldwide and earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Shyamalan recalled that the studio wanted to market "Unbreakable" as a horror thriller, even though it was a superhero film.

"If you deny what it is because you're afraid it's different, you steal all of its power," 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 start of a whole genre. They didn't realize that because they were too afraid to use the words 'comic book.'"

"That was literally the thing that was, no one's going to see a movie about a comic book," he recalled the studio saying. "That was literally, you can't do that. And I thought, 'I love it! Maybe there are other people who would also consider this a myth and enjoy it.' In my mind, it was a movie that was, 'The guy crashes, an accident where everyone dies but him, and he doesn't have a scratch on him, and someone says, 'I know why that happened. You're a real superhero.' That's the movie, but that was never said or sold."