A clever director and actor duo found a way to cheat the film system to make their movie Unsubscribe the top film at the box office the week of June 10. The domestic release grossed a whopping $25,488 on ticket sales, according to gross-tracking website Box Office Mojo.
The 29-minute horror film, made on a zero dollar production budget, was shown in only one theater with just two people actually watching the movie.
Those two people were actor Eric Tabach and director Christian Nilsson who saw an opportunity to take advantage of a loophole created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The traveling virus caused movie theaters around the nation to shutdown, preventing tentpoles and highly anticipated blockbuster films from releasing.
But, instead of being deterred by the latest development in the entertainment industry, Tabach and Nilsson decided to produce a film and distribute it themselves with the goal in mind to have the No. 1 movie in America by using the four-walling method. In so little words, four-walling is the process of filmmakers buying out a theater for a flat-rate to screen their movies. The tactic enables filmmakers to keep revenue from ticket sales.
“I noticed that the box office figures were absurd; $9,000, $15,000 for each movie. Nothing big was coming out. Blockbuster films were on hold. I wanted to find a way to get the biggest number,” Tabach told BBC. “Four-walling is when distributors rent out a movie theatre and buy all the seats. So, they pay a flat fee to the theatre, and any money they make off seats goes straight into their pockets. The moment we realized that was an option of distribution, we went for it.”
Unsubscribe is a short thriller about five YouTubers that join an online video-call and find themselves haunted and hunted by a mysterious internet troll. The cast includes Tabach, Charlie Tahan, Michelle Khare and Zach Kornfeld.
With a script that only took one day to write, Nilsson put together a cast and recorded a Zoom call over four days to create the film. Once the film was edited, both Nilsson and Tabach set out to find a theater.
“Because most theaters were closed, all the calls were going straight to voicemail,” Nilsson said in an interview BBC. “You really couldn’t even get a hold of anybody.”
Nilsson just so happened to have a connect at an independent theater in his hometown of Westhampton Beach, New York where he used to work that was willing to screen the film despite widespread theater closures. So, the duo rented the theater for three screenings, considered sold-out with only Tabach and Nilsson in attendance.
It took some convincing, but after several rejections, Box Office Mojo parent company IMDb finally approved the legitimacy of the movie once media outlets recognized the film.
“This is not a stunt or a move you could make in any other environment,” Nilsson said. “The pandemic really had caused this almost a perfect storm of situations where we could become the No. 1 box office in America very easily.”
Unsubscribe is currently available for rent online on Vimeo. In the meantime, Nilsson has started a feature length film.
“No matter what, you can always find creative ways to get something done,” Tabach said. “Even in difficult circumstances. It was cool to see all these people stuck at home come together and make a project.”
