Marquee History
Week 45 - 2015
By Max Braden
November 9, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This week's highlights are the 25th anniversary of Dances With Wolves plus some early accolades for Keira Knightley and Laura Linney.
Here are the movies that premiered on theater marquees this week...
10 years ago - November 11, 2005
Zathura
If I were to make a mental list of unexpected transitions in Hollywood history, I think Jon Favreau’s seemingly effortless rise to blockbuster director would be near the top. From the early and mid 1990s Favreau was typically found in supporting roles. Yet, in just over five years, he went from a $5 million budget for his own project Made in 2001, to Elf with Will Ferrell, to this $65 million project, to helming Iron Man. Bravo, Jon. Zathura is a sci-fi adventure based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg with Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, and Kristen Stewart (a few years before they would breakout in Hollywood) as siblings who get sucked into a battle against aliens after playing a board game they find in their basement, much like the adaptation of Jumanji. Reviews were good but releasing Zathura between Chicken Little and and the next Harry Potter sequel hurt its box office chances. Zathura opened at #2 behind Chicken Little with $13.4 million at 3,223 theaters, and only earned $29.2 million during its run.
Derailed
Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston star professionals who have a chance encounter and then begin an affair, in this thriller based on the novel by James Siegel. Owen’s star was rising after receiving an Oscar nomination for Closer, and Aniston had been in the hit comedy Along Came Polly, both released the year before, which might explain audience interest in a moody movie that was panned by critics. Derailed opened at #3 with $12.2 million at 2,443 theaters and went on to gross $36 million in the U.S.
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
Queens rapper 50 Cent seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate the rap charts in early 2003 with his album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, featuring the single In da Club. The press around his success noted that he had survived nine gunshots in an attack only a few years earlier. It’s the kind of background that makes for a great story, so like 8 Mile (for which 50 Cent had contributed four tracks), Curtis Jackson got his own biopic. Reviews were mixed and the movie was not as successful as 8 Mile. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ opened at #4 with $12 million from 1,652 theaters, eventually earning $30.9 million overall.
Pride and Prejudice
Keira Knightley Matthew Macfadyen star as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in the adaptation of Jane Austen’s period novel. Despite opening at only 215 theaters this weekend, Pride and Prejudice still managed to earn enough for a top ten spot with $2.8 million. It expanded to wide release for the Thanksgiving weekend and had earned $38 million by the Academy Awards ceremony. The film earned Keira Knightley her first Oscar nomination, along with nominations for Art Direction, Costume Design, and Original Score. Wright won a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer and followed that up with Atonement in 2007, again starring Knightley.
15 years ago - November 10, 2000
Little Nicky
Adam Sandler stars in this sci-fi comedy as a son of Satan who competes against his brothers to succeed his father as the Prince of Darkness but has to learn how to survive in New York City first. Reviews were poor and the movie was later nominated for Razzie awards in Worst Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette), Director, and Screenplay. The movie’s box office performance was a failure after the hits of The Waterboy and Big Daddy. Little Nicky opened at #2 with $16 million at 2,910 theaters and ended up only grossing $39.4 million overall.
Men of Honor
Cuba Gooding, Jr. stars in the story of Carl Brashear, the first African American master diver in the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and 60s. Robert De Niro plays his superior officer and ally against racism and bureaucracy. Men of Honor opened at #3 with $13.3 million at 2,092 theaters and went on to make a profitable $48.8 million in the U.S.
Red Planet
Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Tim Sizemore star in this sc-fi thriller about a team of scientists hoping to terraform Mars but run into trouble with an alien lifeform. The movie was both a critical and financial bomb. Red Planet opened at #5 behind Meet the Parents in its sixth week with $8.7 million at 2,703 theaters. Its U.S. gross of $17.4 million and even worldwide total came nowhere close to its $60 million budget.
You Can Count on Me
Laura Linney stars in this melancholy drama as a single mother who deals with her burdensome boss (Matthew Broderick) and nomadic brother (Mark Ruffalo). The movie opened to strong reviews in limited release at just eight theaters this weekend, expanding to 150 theaters through the winter. Linney received her first Oscar nomination for this role, and writer/director Kenneth Lonergan was nominated for his screenplay. Eventually the movie grossed $9.1 million.
20 years ago - November 10, 1995
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Jim Carrey returns as the eccentric private detective in the sequel to his 1994 breakout comedy. Carrey was enjoying explosive success at this time, having also starred in The Mask and Dumb and Dumber in 1994, and co-starring as The Riddler in Batman Forever during the summer of 1995. Reviews of this sequel were weaker than the first movie, but that didn’t stop audiences this weekend. When Nature Calls opened at #1 with $37.8 million at 2,652 theaters, taking the November opening weekend record from Interview With the Vampire set the previous year. This was also the second biggest opening weekend of 1995, after Batman Forever’s $52 million, and Carrey’s biggest solo debut to date. When Nature Calls eventually grossed $108 million, a bit short of the $119 million for The Mask. An animated TV series based on the character (with a different voice actor) premiered in December and a direct-to-video sequel about Ventura’s son (without Carrey) followed in 2009.
Carrington
Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce star as painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey in this drama of their unusual romance in the 1920s. Carrington opened at 12 theaters this weekend and later increased to 127 theaters for a total gross of $3.2 million. Pryce was later nominated for a BAFTA award for his performance.
25 years ago - November 9, 1990
Child’s Play 2
“Hi, I’m Chucky, wanna play?” 1988’s horror movie about a boy’s doll that is possessed by a serial killer was well-received and profitable, spawning the Chucky series. Young actor Alex Vincent returns as Andy, the boy who the resurrected doll Chucky wants to possess. John Lafia, who wrote the first movie, replaces Tom Holland as director for this sequel. Child’s Play 2 didn’t get quite the good reviews of the first movie but audiences still made it #1 for the weekend with $10.7 million (over twice the amount of #2, last week’s Jacob Ladder) at 1,996 theaters. It earned a total of $25 million in the U.S., falling short of the first movie’s take, but its profitability helped generate another sequel in 1991 and three more from 1998 to 2013.
The Krays
A U.K. crime drama based on a real life gangster family in the 1960s, starring Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp. The Krays opened at #15 with a moderate screen average at 392 theaters and went on to earn $2 million in the U.S.
Dances With Wolves
Having hit it big with The Untouchables, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams in the late 1980s, Costner finally got his passion project underway, this time both as an actor and director, based on the 1988 Michael Blake novel. Dances With Wolves stars Costner as a John Dunbar, a Union Army soldier who takes up a remote Army outpost after the war, befriends and assimilates into the local Sioux tribe, and then is considered a traitor to the U.S. forces. Mary McDonnell co-stars as his love interest, named Stands With Fist, in her first major film role.
It could be said that the western genre had peaked in the 1950s and 1960s and had been dead for years - Costner had himself had co-starred in Silverado in 1985, which was a box office disappointment. But you could also point to Pale Rider (1985) and Young Guns (1988) as recent westerns that opened at #1 for examples of life left in the genre. Dances With Wolves was an epic that occupied the space between Civil War projects like North and South (1985 miniseries) and Glory (1989) and those classic gunfighter westerns: a frontier movie.
The hand-wringing during production of this epic frontier/war movie was about Costner’s abilities to manage a complicated project as a first time director, and the budget overruns. But at release all that concern turned into praise. Critical reviews and audience reactions were very positive. The movie opened at 14 theaters this weekend with a $42,733 per-site average and expanded to over 1,000 theaters for Thanksgiving, taking the #3 spot and holding a top 10 box office position through the Oscars and up to Memorial Day weekend 1991. At the Oscars it won seven out of 12 nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Actor for Costner. During its run, the movie made $175 million in the U.S. and over $415 million worldwide. That made it the thirrd highest grossing movie of 1990, the highest grossing movie never to have held a #1 box office position (a record it held until My Big Fat Greek Wedding came along in 2002), and as of 2015 it’s still the highest grossing movie in the western genre.
The Return of Superfly
This third movie in the Superfly series came 17 years after the previous movie, Superfly T.N.T. In the first two movies, Ron O’Neal played Youngblood Priest, a drug dealer who rises above the enemies that try to keep him down. For the third movie, soap opera actor Nathan Purdee plays Priest, avenging his friend’s murder. Samuel L. Jackson is featured in the cast, having appeared in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and Mo’ Better Blues released a few months earlier. Curtis Mayfield returns to provide the soundtrack with songs by Ice-T, Eazy-E, and Tone Loc. Neither this movie nor the soundtrack made the impression that the first blaxploitation made. Opening at 260 theaters, audience interest was weak and the movie earned less than a million dollars overall.
30 years ago - November 8, 1985
Target
Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon star as father and son who are drawn into a life-or-death chase in Europe when Hackman’s wife is kidnapped and his secret past is exposed. Director Arthur Penn was best known for the violence in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde; he had also directed Hackman in the 1975 thriller Night Moves. Reviews were moderately appreciative of the action. Target opened at #2 behind last week’s Death Wish 3 with $2.6 million from 1,085 theaters. It earned $9.0 million during its run.
Transylvania 6-5000
Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr. star in this comedy about a contemporary trek to search out Frankenstein’s monster. Geena Davis is in the cast as a vampire, two years before she and Goldblum were married. Writer/Director Rudy De Luca had also written the Mel Brooks movies Silent Movie and High Anxiety. Reviews of Transylvania 6-5000 were not good, and it opened at #5 behind last week’s To Live and Die in L.A., with $2.5 million from 701 theaters. It eventually earned $7.1 million.
That Was Then… This is Now
This sequel to 1983’s The Outsiders was written by Emilio Estevez (his first produced screenplay), who stars as a teenager who gets into trouble. Estevez had appeared in the The Outsiders as a Greaser named Two-Bit Matthews, but plays a character named Mark Jennings in this movie. Craig Sheffer and Kim Delaney co-star, with Morgan Freeman in the cast before he became prominent in the late 1980s. Where The Outsiders was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, this movie was directed by Christopher Cain; he’d later direct Estevez again in Young Guns in 1988. That Was Then… opened at #6 with $2.5 million at 800 theaters - half that of The Outsiders opening - and eventually earned a third of The Outsiders’ $25 million gross.
Bring on the Night
With the end of the Synchronicity tour in early 1984 The Police were effectively done as a band, allowing Sting to launch his solo career. His next band featured jazz musicians and backup singers. Director Michael Apted followed the rehearsal and performances of the songs for Sting’s first album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, which was released in June of 1985. By the release of this documentary, the album had released four singles, with “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” reaching #3 on the U.S. Hot 100 chart. The album reached #2 on the Billboard 200, and was nominated for four Grammys. The documentary opened at #11 in theaters on 409 screens and eventually earned $1.9 million. The film later won the Grammy for Best Music Video - Long Form, and a live album of the music was released in the summer of 1986, later earning a Grammy win for Best Pop Vocal Performance.
Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!