diff --git a/scrapeit/imdb.py b/scrapeit/imdb.py
index ef59fb1..0dc0c31 100644
--- a/scrapeit/imdb.py
+++ b/scrapeit/imdb.py
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ from google import google
 from utils import stripTags, htmldecode
 
 import utils
+import chardet
 
 cache_base = "/var/cache/scrapeit/cache/"
 
@@ -26,16 +27,22 @@ def read_url_utf8(url):
   if os.path.exists(path):
     f = open(path)
     data = f.read()
+    encoding = chardet.detect(data)['encoding']
+    if not encoding: encoding = 'latin-1'
     f.close()
+    data = unicode(data, encoding)
     return data
   else:
-    data = utils.read_url_utf8(url)
+    data = utils.read_url(url)
     folder = os.path.dirname(path)
     if not os.path.exists(folder):
       os.makedirs(folder)
     f = open(path, 'w')
     f.write(data)
     f.close()
+    encoding = chardet.detect(data)['encoding']
+    if not encoding: encoding = 'latin-1'
+    data = unicode(data, encoding)
     return data
 
 def read_url(url):