MovieChat Forums > Unthinkable (2010) Discussion > Wow! Unthinkable #3 on IMDB!

Wow! Unthinkable #3 on IMDB!

posted 15 years ago by Caldecot
255 replies | jump to latest

As producer, I am really pleased that the picture is stirring interest and attention, and mostly positive. Getting 7.3 in User Reviews is a good mark. Hitting #3 in the IMDB title rankings is astonishing, especially since it's a climb from about 3000 two weeks ago.

But I have to ask, how are you seeing the movie? There's no theatrical release because the deal collapsed in the money crisis and the distribution company went belly-up. SONY hasn't released it on DVD in the US yet. That comes in two weeks, on June 15.

Are you seeing it on pirated torrents? Googling "Unthinkable Samuel Jackson movie torrent" gives me many choices from which to download an earlier cut with only temp music (Graham Revell created a terrific score, by the way). It's not the finished movie but it's sorta close. The ending's a little different, for one thing.

Personally I feel strangely conflicted. On the one hand, there's so much positive response -- believe me, I've made movies no-one cared about! -- and on the other, all this seems to be coming from folks who have stolen the work of a lot of people, watched it without paying for it.

That this is a ticking bomb movie that asks a moral question makes a moral question about how you see it appropriate, I guess.

I'm not interested in condemning you if that's how you saw it. I'm interested in asking the question. How do you feel about it?

[–] rishabh-6 15 years ago

Hi Mr. Caldecot
Loved the movie.
Was just wondering if you could let me know where you got the version with the temp music. Would love to check that out.
Thanks.

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Not sure what you mean. When a movie is being edited, before the composer has finished his work, there is a temp soundtrack, music from other movies or whatever, that gets laid in to set the mood.

Often when a movie is being previewed to an audience, so the film-makers can see what works and what doesn't, that temp soundtrack is on the film, again to guide the experience before the final music score is done.

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[–] moviemaniac12 15 years ago

the_long_journey_picture where are you from? Your english is terrible. Maybe you should get some English lessons then you will understand the movie better. I am not being rude, I'm just pointing out that maybe you had a problem in comprehending the story.

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[–] ring911 15 years ago

It's sad but your best movie is still Pootie Tang. And you're the *beep* producer that got Bruce Lee's son killed in The Crow, great job.

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Thanks for taking the time to check the credits of someone you clearly feel superior to. I appreciate the effort. Your callous ignorance of the manner in which Brandon Lee died, and your willingness to use his death as an insult, disgusts me. No further reply necessary.

[–] toetotoe 15 years ago

Caldecot, I appreciate your comments on this as you obviously have a vested interest, but I believe that the film industry doesn't do itself any favours in deterring the pirates.
As other people have suggested, simultaneous global releases would help to cut down piracy, but for me the biggest aid to the film industry would be to embrace the internet as the music industry has done and allow a download service, music sales are definitely up after they have been made more readily available on the internet.
I am a family man, so dont get to the cinema except to watch family films, if films were available to download or even stream, either at the same time as a cinema release, or maybe a month after, Im sure your profits would far exceed any from just a cinema release. Also I dont believe you would lose your core cinema audience either, as suggested earlier people use the cinema as a social thing.

Also, if the industry got rid of its image of trying to rip the consumer off, by for example, supplying multiple versions of films, withholding inferior versions until a later date (yes LOTR im talking about you), or even cutting down on quality then maybe people would be more concerned about them losing money.

My last point, DVD sales could well be down because quite possibly people dont want shelves and shelves of dust gatherers, in these days of multimedia players, having a hundred films on an unobtrusive hard drive is more appealing to me than a roomful of dvd boxes, filled with extras I dont want, commentaries I dont listen to, and adverts that I dont care about. I have bought many dvds in the past that I have ripped to my hard drive because I no longer want all the packaging that comes with it.

PS The film was great by the way

[–] akyankee-1 15 years ago

While you're busy making everyone feel bad for you're lack of income off this movie, including people who I'm sure are currently unemployed like myself, I am going to watch this movie for free. If it is worth the exorbitant price of any movie maybe I will buy it.

If you people really wanted to get people to pirate less you would scale your movie prices by the quality of movie produced. Shelling out 20 dollars just is not going to happen these days when most of the movies made are *beep*

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Once you've watched it, let me know if you think it was worthless.

I'm sorry you're not employed. There are eight million Americans unemployed who were employed a couple of years ago. It's a disaster far beyond what people are writing about. That's one thing we can agree about.

But, just for the record, I don't know who the "you people" are. Not me, not Gregor Jordan, who directed it, not the hundred or so people who worked on it from camera operator to costume assistant. We don't set movie ticket prices. We just work to make a living. If movies can't recoup their costs, the folks who now work in this business will join you in joblessness.

This isn't in your control any more than it's in mine, of course. And one of the things that the experience has taught me is that the pricing and availability of movies has to change. But no-one quite knows how the new business model will or should work.

[–] sweetalker 15 years ago

Here’s the thing about pirating.

Back when anyone could record a song off the radio with a cassette deck, naysayers screeched that it would be the death of the music industry. Know why it wasn’t? Because people realized that cassettes (and later, CDs) offered far superior quality, along with niceties such as lyrics, liner notes and pictures of the artists you couldn’t get anywhere else.

But if a song was crap, people wouldn’t buy the cassette/CD. Because crap is still crap, no matter how pretty a bow you put on it.

When VCRs became popular, the movie industry quaked in its boots. “People are going to be able to copy without paying us! Oh noes!” Yet VHS remained profitable. I recorded quite a few movies on my VCR and if it was worth seeing more than once, if it had a really good, engrossing story, good acting, and good scenery/effects, I'd go buy the VHS.

Likewise, a DVD/BluRay offers much better quality, as well as things like commentary, deleted scenes, alternate endings, etc. that you can’t get anywhere else. But if a movie is crap, people aren’t going to buy it. And they shouldn’t have to. I know movies are expensive to make, but perhaps moviemakers should reconsider the QUALITY of the movies they choose to make.

There’s something else the industry needs to realize: Digital is here and now. I lead a busy life, I usually can’t be bothered to go to a store just to buy a DVD, or spend the gas to go to a rental place and rent a copy for $5 to $7. Add that to the “microwave mentality” that makes this generation so darn impatient for what they want, and you have a problem. The solution is to OFFER permanent, crystal clear downloads of your movie online. If I could choose between a free crappy copy and a relatively inexpensive ($5/$7) trustworthy clear version? I’d pay for the real thing.

What I'd really like, as a viewer and customer, is to go to a movie's website, look around and find out more about the characters, the actors, the storyline, and the locations, and maybe watch a trailer and a clip or two. If it seems promising, there should be a button that will accept my credit card and allow me to download the movie. I'll take it further: If I want to see deleted scenes, that could be an extra $1. Alternate endings, $1 each to download. I don't wanna go through Netflix, I don't wanna join some club, I just wanna watch a movie.

If you, Mr. Producer, decide to be the first to do this, please let me know. I wouldn't mind bragging about this idea. I won't charge you for it, though, because to you, it may be crap. :)

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Your post is exceptionally thoughtful and well-spoken. You're not alone in how you feel, but the stepped availability of features, an a la carte menu rather than the expensive prix fixe selection, is a new wrinkle to me. Thanks!

One misunderstanding that you might have is the notion that I, as a producer, have any control over the distribution of the movie. I don't, not really, not when it costs $10MM to make, like Unthinkable (and that's a relatively inexpensive picture for a movie-star movie).

Peter Dekom, a voluble and smart attorney and industry observed, said those who are attempting fight piracy may as well be "building a bridge in the middle of the ocean." If my experience with Unthinkable has taught me anything (and it's taught me a lot and not always happily), it's shown me that truth.

The experiences, justifications, occasional excuses, and careful rationales presented here in these message boards are definitely food for thought.

What's happened with Unthinkable, a popular movie with no theatrical distribution that blows up virally to high ratings and a high ranking, has caught the attention of more than a few people in the business. My hope is that a lot of people will be learning from reading your voices.

Please keep sharing your ideas. (And maybe cut back on the free downloads in advance of next Tuesday, when Sony, who invested a lot of money to make the picture possible, releases the DVD and BluRay?)

Some day, maybe a few years from now, people will be able to look in the rear-view mirror and say, "Oh so that's the business model that worked." But they'll be looking backward. Right now, looking forward, nobody knows.

[–] sweetalker 15 years ago

[Yeah, I'm a genius writer, me. :) You hiring for your next project yet? I'm a voice actress, and I punch up scripts like a mo-fo, especially dialogue. That's where the nickname came from.]

TV box sets are a great example I point to when making this argument.

Pretty much anyone can watch, record, DVR a TV show. You can catch it on Hulu if all else fails, and some shows (South Park comes to mind) offer entire seasons online. Yet people still purchase box sets of TV shows. They're more profitable than most feature films released on DVD. People buy them because of the enhanced quality and the special features, because they've seen the show and they love it.

To tell you the truth, I haven't seen this movie. Someone else mentioned it on a website and I came to imdb to get more information on it.

And yes, I'll be renting it from a RedBox when it comes out.

[–] Wax_Paper 15 years ago

You know, a high-quality final edit of Hurt Locker hit the torrent sites back in 2008 (when it was only being shown on a handful of screens, a REALLY limited release). No one had heard of it and DVD distro was still at least a year away.

I remember downloading it, watching it and loving it, wondering why I had never seen any marketing or press. Almost two years later, we all know how the story eventually unfolded. I realize that the circumstances are a bit different with Unthinkable, but hey, I'm just saying... The Academy's best picture of 2010 was leaked online in a similar fashion; a high-quality copy that allowed millions of people to watch it, who probably would have never known about it otherwise.

Unless you're lucky enough to be backed with the full force of big-studio marketing and a wide-release, you won't find better free publicity than illegal downloads.

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

It's a tough call. My bet is that if we had access to the true numbers on The Hurt Locker, we'd find the picture still has not broken even for the financiers.

Even with all the publicity (paid and free) that came with the successful Oscar campaign, it still only did $15MM at the US box office. DVD sales are down.

It's entirely possible that the technology that allowed, as you put it, "millions of people to watch it" also siphoned off revenues from people all over the world.

I'm not "blaming the pirates" or saying I *know* the truth.

I'm saying that free access to a high-quality copy *may* have broken the economic model for that movie, even with its Oscar win.

All those millions of people, "who probably would have never known about it otherwise," aren't members of the Academy. They don't vote. The millions of downloads don't influence those who do vote (like me). And those millions would have heard about it when it won the Oscar, and maybe wanted to see it, but they already had seen it. And paid nothing for it.

If Nic Chartier, who put the movie together, lost money on it, or if his partners did, why do you think they'll be likely to put money into other similarly risky movies?

This equation of "piracy equals free publicity and nets out positive to the film-makers" hasn't yet convinced me. (Not that that will stop the practice from happening.)

[–] Cullomatic_2000 15 years ago

I do not expect I am typical but if I see a movie that I love at no cost, I will buy the Blu Ray or DVD, I have about 30 Blu Rays and 50 DVD's that were part of what one could call a try before you buy model.

Why Buy.

1. I want the director to make another movie. (The main reason)
2. The Blu will have a uncompressed sound track
3. Both the Blu and DVD will have extras.
4. Hard Drives fail, I want something I can enjoy years down the road.

I will be buying the Blu Ray of this movie.

I expect you can not say but I hope the change of ending is not a drug out physical depiction of what you know is going to happen in the last seconds. That would slant the moral question that is the major theme in the movie via typical blockbuster hardheadedness and rig the "What would you do" question. The 20 20 hindsight of a seeing the actual event played out will lead to "Of course we must prevent that at all costs", long after one needed to make the decision.

VOTE 10/10 FOR THIS MASTERPIECE
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490668/

[–] fabiopb 15 years ago

Why don't you at least give us the opportunity to retribute with a "Paypal Donate" link (or whatever)?

You see, I don't want the BluRay. I'm really not the collector type and I never see a movie twice so it would be a waste having that disc gathering dust. Besides, it comes bundled with hundreds of other costs such as manufacturing (plus the manufacturer's profit), printing (idem), distributing (idem), the store's profit, their rent, taxes over all those things, etc, etc, that I see no need to pay for. Not today.

Also I'm not a movie-theater-experience lover. I just don't care. You may find it funny but I also slowly lost interest in going to the movies because of the audience's lack of education (too much talk, noise, disrespect, etc). Watching the movie in the theater also comes with hundreds of associated costs.

It seems that what I really like to do is to get the movie, watch it in the comfort of my home and delete it right after. So why can't I pay for *this*?

My preferences may seem a bit off for you, but if you come to think of it that's exactly the profile of the average movie downloader. And if so many people are pirating, it means that it's a quite popular preference. So explore it!

Have you seen "The Man from Earth (2007)"? If you haven't, do it. Trust me, it's brilliant. And just like Unthinkable it was downloaded all around. But the interesting thing is that they opened a donation channel (I donated a few dollars).

This movie had a budged of $ 200K, won dozens awards and it's producer, Eric D. Wilkinson, publicly thanked the torrent users:

http://www.rlslog.net/piracy-isnt-that-bad-and-they-know-it/

Why can't you guys follow their example and take donations? What could you possibly lose?

(on a side note, I don't believe that $ 200M productions would survive in this business model, but for me this is the most exciting thing about it. You don't really need a good story to atract viewers when you have such obscene amount of money to invest on the producion and marketing. Now with $200k things get different and the writers have to come up with some seriously good stuff. I prefer 20 films in the style of Unthinkable over one Avatar. Or 20 The Man from Earth over one fat-Eddie-Murphy comedy. Really, that's money well spent.)

PS - Let me take the opportunity to ask you something. Here in Brazil going to the movies cost about 15-25BRL, or 8.3-13.9USD (of course it feels much more due to economic differences). Anyway, when I pay 10 USD to see your movie, how much of it actually goes back to you (studio, investors, etc.)?

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] sweetalker 15 years ago

Woo-hoo! I made people think! :D

But seriously, while Netflix is good in theory, not everybody wants to pay X amount of dollars a month for a subscription. I wouldn't pay triple the price of a movie ticket for a month-long pass to get into the theater, when all I want to do is go there once.

[–] sportsfan99 15 years ago

Actually I made a similar suggestion yesterday - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914863/board/thread/164491995?d=latest&am p;p=1#latest

It involves DRM but the main point is to look at it this way for most movies that gets pirated that I said yesterday

So a movie opens up on friday, I would rather watch it at home than going to the movies. I can download a crap quality cam/ts pirated version usually that same day...or wait a few weeks till an R5 DVD-like quality gets pirated and released. OR I can watch a DVD-like HQ DRM file that same day for a small fee that the producers put out there.

I'd say over 90% of movies gets pirated during theatrical release and you are always going to get people who will want to download for free. So one option is to cater to those willing to pay for the HQ file when the movie opens. And those that will want to download for free will stick to the LQ cams/ts in the beginning of its theatrical run.

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Yes you did. And thank you for it.

[–] Vergilya 15 years ago

First of all I enjoyed the show but would give it a 6. The actors were great and compelling to a tale as simple as this.

Like everyone else, I watched the downloaded version, and like your movie the question of right and wrong blurs the line. One of the good things about the internet is the ability to share things which would never get to see the light of day. Your movie would have been banned in my country for the very fact that the terrorist is a muslim. Even if it gets through it would have been mercilessly censored unprofessionally and that is usually the norm.

We don't mind paying $3USD, equivalent to our 10 bucks here, for a good movie at the cinema but we still get bad censoring, disturbing subtitles, sometimes even poor visuals and sound quality, talking people and ringing cell phones. Between paying the creator of an artistic piece of work and watching at the cinema I would prefer the former. But so far, no one has worked out the system or at least put it into practice.

Since the distribution company you were dealing with belly-up, maybe it's time to consider internet distribution/marketing for your future projects. I found your movie through recommendations as well; otherwise I would never even know it existed.

Thank you for making the movie.

[–] Lionheart84 15 years ago

Just the same way Younger didn't provide much evidence of the bombs' existence, I find it hard to believe that you sir are really the producer of this great picture. What are the odds of a producer opening a thread on IMDb, asking around how people liked his movie? :D I haven't seen neither Jerry nor Steven doing it ;)

But for the sake of conversation let's believe that you really are who you claim to be & I want to congratulate you for making this brilliant movie. I've seen hundreds of movies in my time & I must say that nothing came even close to blow my mind away & keeping me on the edge of my seat like Unthinkable. You did an excellent choice working with the writers, because the writing was excellent.

That aside, I come to your main point about the piracy issue:

First & foremost the biggest failure was the fact that this great movie was not released theatrically. A movie not being released theatrically is equal to the movie being rated as a B movie (which is absolutely not the case here). What I saw was A+!

As you certainly know, theatrical release means:

1. Trying to get your investment back
2. Trying to make profit once the investement money is fully covered

Sincet this wasn't the case with Unthinkable, you now depend fully on DVD sales in order to complete the 2 goals mentioned above.

As you certainly know DVD sales is often regarded in the business as a bonus to what you've already earned through ticket sales. If you're planning to earn on DVDs from the beginning you have failed. I fully understand how much now you depend on the DVD sales in order to get your money back but it's not gonna bring anything if you blame a few college kids who download your movie, watch it & then probably delete it.

As a producer when you invest your money in making a film, I'm sure you know what the stakes are & with the Internet in the 21 Century there can't be much of a control on DVD pirating.

The real people to blame, are those responsible for the movie not going to theatres. I'm very sorry for this. You probably got hooked up with the wrong people who truly wasted this great movie. Whether it was the company or the team, you have to go over that again to see what the problem was. This movie could have been so much more. I would have gone watched it because of Samuel L. Jackon. I was very impressed by his performance in Unthinkable, always liked him & I'm happy to see that he still has his juice.

Nevertheless thank you for making such a meaningful movie & try to ignore those who say it sucked. They should go back watching Tom & jerry instead.

Wish you all the best for your future projects. Salute.

[–] Caldecot 15 years ago

Hi DinoCorleone, thanks for the nice words. And yes, it's me silly name and all. You can see my credits on imdb. (Somebody even looked them up and then tried to make me feel bad for producing Pooty Tang but I say Sa-Da-Tay to that.)

No question the picture should have gotten, and was intended to get, theatrical release but some bad business decisions on the part of a company that was supposed to provide it, in the middle of an unprecedented and unforgiving economic melt-down, removed that possibility.

It's a shame it broke that way. But truthfully there are a lot of orphaned theatricals around (so many that's the way they're described). This just turned out to be a particularly good one. It happens.

This is a tough business and I'm not looking for pity. I'm proud of what we made, and REALLY happy that it's found audience that is so passionate and engaged. May the same happen when the DVD drops next week.