United We Stand...

As the controversial film United 93 opens the Tribeca Film Festival this evening, the studio suits at Universal as well as every industry rival, is holding its breath awaiting to see how the film does.

Variety's Gabriel Snyder Ian Mohr and Adam Dawtrey spell out what's at stake here:

Studio tracking on the pic is ambiguous: By a slim margin the film is the top choice among males, but it's also registering a high percentage of "definitely not interested."

The weekend's other new releases include "Akeelah and the Bee," "RV" and "Stick It." The response is not unexpected. Indeed many industry insiders were surprised "United 93" got Universal's greenlight at all.

The decision to make the $15 million film stemmed from a series of fortuitous events: The demise of a project at Paramount and Universal's desire to make a sequel to "The Bourne Supremacy," which Greengrass had directed...

"When the film he was going to do at Paramount fell through, I said, 'Why don't you do a ('United 93') treatment?' " said Tim Bevan co-chair of Working Title, the division of U that produced the pic. "He agreed to do a treatment in July, delivered 20 pages, and we said, 'Let's do this.'

...Before lensing began at Pinewood Studios in November, researchers interviewed the families of the people aboard United 93. U announced it would donate 10% of the opening weekend's proceeds to build a memorial for those who died aboard the hijacked flight.

Family members of those on the hijacked plane have supported the film. At a press conference Monday, Tribeca Fest's Jane Rosenthal said there will be 91 relatives of people on the flight on hand tonight. She also said she feels viewers are ready for such films, as "we deal with this every day...

Whether the pic is too emotionally difficult for [general audiences] elsewhere is now the key question [the studio] faces.

..."You make a film like this in order to start a debate, and that's what has happened," Bevan said. "Whether the film goes on to perform at the box office very much depends on what happens this week."

Either way, with a budget of just $15 million, "United 93" was a fairly small bet for Universal. Studio reduced the project's risk even further when it brought on Sidney Kimmel Entertainment just before lensing started to co-finance about a third of the production's budget.

Here's the complete Variety article...

Meanwhile, on April 22nd, The Movie Reporter (aka IESB) posted a series of video interviews with victims families as they share their thoughts on the movie. Make sure you take a look.

As someone who thinks it's not too soon for this...I'm hoping that it will do as well as it can for the victims relatives. I know it will be a difficult film to watch...I will probably be very uncomfortable...

But that's the point, we as a nation need to feel uncomfortable again--to be reminded of what kind of horror we face--before history repeats itself.