The Dark Night Returns…

Nearly two decades after cult comic-book movie Unbreakable bemused the mainstream, and two years after that Split bombshell, crossover sequel Glass is now one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of recent years. Total Film tracks the ups and downs of the groundbreaking superhero saga about extraordinary individuals who live among us, with insight from series mastermind M. Night Shyamalan and his super-powered cast.

- Jordan Farley

Since Unbreakable’s release 18 years ago, M. Night Shyamalan has had two especially memorable encounters with his Mr. Glass, Samuel L. Jackson. On both occasions, they were inside separate moving vehicles. And on both occasions, Jackson bellowed a single sentence at Shyamalan before speeding off into the LA sun: “When are we making that sequel, motherfucker?!”

It was a valid question in Jackson’s mind. “From the beginning, it was supposed to be a trio of films,” Jackson recalls, talking to Total Film in late October, his work on Glass already in the can. “I thought we did a pretty good job with Unbreakable, so I always wondered why we didn’t make the other instalments.” The “why” was simple economics. Made for $75m and grossing just shy of $250m, Unbreakable turned a profit, but under performed at the box office compared to The Sixth Sense ($672m on a $40m budget). Even more damning was the “C” Cinemascore. By comparison, notorious 2004 stinker Catwoman skulked away with a “B”.

There’s little question now that Unbreakable was a film wildly ahead of its time. Asking “what if comic-book heroes were real?” and treating the subject with extraordinary intelligence, audiences weren’t ready for a grand deconstruction of superhero cinema before superhero cinema could take flight (for context, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man wouldn’t release for another 18 months). Neither was what the film audiences were sold. Studio marketing framed