Marquee History
Week 46 - 2015
By Max Braden
November 16, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This week's highlights are the the massive box office hits of Home Alone, the Grinch, and Harry Potter, plus the 35th anniversary of Raging Bull.
Here are the movies that premiered on theater marquees this week...
10 years ago - November 18, 2005
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Goblet of Fire was the fourth movie in the Harry Potter franchise, following Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Following directors Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuaron, this film was directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral). The plot here puts Harry into the dangerous Triwizard Tournament. Critics were impressed by the transition of the main characters from kids to teens, and audience made the movie a huge hit at the box office. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opened at #1 with $102 million from 3,858 theaters, allowing last week’s four opening movies to pick up less than $20 million combined. Not only did this Potter smash the November opening weekend record previously set by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001, this was the fourth biggest opening ever, after Spider-Man, Revenge of the Sith, and Shrek 2. Domestically it earned $290 million during its run (behind Star Wars III and The Chronicles of Narnia for the year), and a whopping $606 million from foreign markets for a total worldwide gross of $896 million.
Walk the Line
This biopic of the life of country music star Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter came a year after Jamie Foxx portrayed Ray Charles, and was an early Oscar contender. While critics praised Joaquin Phoenix for his portrayal of Cash, it was Reese Witherspoon who came out of the film as the big winner. Witherspoon won the Oscar for Best Actress as a first time nominee, and also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Awards for the role. The movie also earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound Mixing. The soundtrack later won a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack. Walk the Line also did solid business in theaters, opening at #2 with $22 million from 2,961 theaters and finishing with $119 million domestically. Both of those figures outperformed Ray and did so on a smaller budget.
15 years ago - November 17, 2000
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
For decades the Chuck Jones animated TV special Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! has been staple viewing for families during the holiday season. Turn it into a live action movie with the dynamic Jim Carrey as the Grinch and Ron Howard directing and you’re practically guaranteed to steal the box office. Reviews were good but audience reaction was great. The Grinch opened at #1 (and held that position for the next three weeks) with $55 million, the second highest opening of the year and second best November opening (after 1999’s Toy Story 2) to that time. Its total domestic gross of $260 million was the 13th best of all time up to that year. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup, winning the latter category.
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
The 1990s kid-friendly animated series Rugrats prompted Nickelodeon to produce their first animated film for theaters in 1998 and it turned out to be a blockbuster. This sequel focuses on Chuckie, voiced by Christine Cavanaugh (voice of Babe the pig in the live action film from 1995) and introduces Kimi (Dionne Quan). John Lithgow and Susan Sarandon voice the movie’s antagonists. Reviews were good and the movie was profitable, though it came up short of its predecessor. Rugrats in Paris opened at #2 with $22.7 million from 2,934 theaters and went on to gross $76 million domestically.
The 6th Day
If you’re struggling to recall this Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi thriller, you’re not alone; I know I saw it in theaters and yet I can remember only one sequence. The plot takes place in a future where cloning is legal within limits (Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be born from cell cloning in 1996). Schwarzenegger plays a regular guy who must take his life back after his clone has replaced him. He earned three Razzie nominations here: for himself, for playing his clone, and for playing himself and his clone together onscreen. Reviews were below average as was the box office. The 6th Day opened at #4 behind holdover Charlie’s Angels with $13.0 million from 2,516 theaters - the weakest average for this weekend’s openers. Its total domestic gross of $34.5 million was the lowest for Schwarzenegger since Raw Deal in 1986, and not much more than Schwarzenegger’s $25 million paycheck for the movie.
Bounce
In Hollywood long relationships are a rarity, but so are amicable breakups. Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck were one of those short-lived high profile couples from 1997 to 2000, but remarkably she was able to convince him to work together after a breakup for the sake of… his acting, apparently. In this drama he plays an ad exec feeling guilty over giving his flight ticket to a stranger who dies in a crash, and befriends the man’s widow. This was Affleck’s third movie of the year, after Reindeer Games and Boiler Room. Reviews were mixed and audience response was even less enthusiastic. Bounce opened at #5 with $11.4 million from 1,918 theaters, and eventually grossed $36.8 million.
20 years ago - November 17, 1995
GoldenEye
Pierce Brosnan famously missed his first chance to follow Roger Moore as James Bond due to contractual requirements and ended up playing private eye Remington Steele on TV while Timothy Dalton was chosen play 007 in 1987’s The Living Daylights. Audiences didn’t appreciate Dalton’s humorless take on the character (their mistake! It’s still the truest portrayal of Ian Fleming’s character in my opinion) and Dalton’s run ended after two movies when his contract expired while legal disputes held up the next movie. The franchise’s future seemed to be even more in doubt with the end of the Cold War and The Soviet Union.
But Brosnan and GoldenEye turned all that around, combining both the classic elements of the older films with a 1990s contemporary style. The plot, involving a space-based weapon intended to cause financial chaos, brought the age of computers into the Bond universe through two computer programmer characters (Scorupco and Cumming). Judi Dench portrayed the first female M, a role she reprised in six more films. Sean Bean plays the movie’s traitorous antagonist along with the bloodlusty Xenia Onatopp, played by Famke Janssen in her breakthrough role. Tina Turner provides one of the better Bond theme songs, and Eric Serra’s techno score, while controversial, was certainly a stylistic update for the the series. Starting with a pre-credits sequence that included two 00 agents and two eye-popping freefall stunts, the movie made a strong statement that Bond was back.
Critics were impressed by both Brosnan and the character’s refresh, and audiences agreed. GoldenEye opened #1 ahead of last week’s Ace Ventura 2 with $26.2 million from 2,667 theaters - by far the best opening for the series to that time. It also became the first $100 million Bond movie (not adjusted for inflation), earning $106 million in the U.S. A videogame based on the movie followed in 1997, itself a pioneer in the first-person shooter genre. Brosnan starred in three more Bond films, followed by Daniel Craig, and this weekend’s theater marquees featured the 24th movie in the series: Spectre.
The American President
Four years before bringing The West Wing to television, Aaron Sorkin delivered the screenplay for this romantic comedy which included Martin Sheen as an advisor to the President. Michael Douglas plays widower President Andrew Shepherd, who falls in love with a lobbyist played by Annette Bening. The politics in the story addressed environmental protection and gun control. Reviews were positive, and the movie opened at #3 with $10 million from 1,508 theaters. During its run The American President earned $60 million, just shy of the $63 million of Kevin Kline’s 1993 presidential comedy, Dave.
It Takes Two
This comedy stars Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg, and Olsen twins Mary-Kate and Ashley. The twins, now nine-years-old, had just finished the eighth and final season of the ABC sticom Full House earlier that year and had already released half a dozen mystery episodes of The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley. Reviews of It Takes Two were fair for a family-friendly movie. It Takes Two opened at #4 with $5.5 million from 1,581 theaters. It eventually earned $19.4 million.
25 years ago - November 16, 1990
Home Alone
You know the old Hollywood saying: Never work with kids or animals...unless they can make you rich. Writer/director John Hughes became well known in the mid 1980s for his high school comedies, and had directed Macaulay Culkin along with John Candy in Uncle Buck in 1989. Hughes wrote the screenplay for Home Alone, but this movie was directed by Chris Columbus, who had written The Goonies and directed Adventures in Babysitting. Home Alone, of course, is a comedy about an eight-year-old who defends his home from a pair of burglars called “The Wet Bandits” (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) after his family takes off for Christmas vacation without him. Reviews weren’t stellar, but the audience response was phenomenal.
Home Alone opened at #1 with $17.0 million from 1,202 theaters - the best wide opening average of the year. Audiences kept it at #1 for 12 straight weeks into February, and by the time it left theaters in June 1991 it had pulled in $277 million. This put Home Alone at #3 in the all-time domestic box office list (not adjusted for inflation) behind E.T. and Star Wars, and it still holds the record for highest grossing live-action comedy ever. Naturally, a sequel followed in 1992, which still performed very well for the year but earned $100 million less than the original movie. Chris Columbus went on to helm the first two movies in another massive franchise: Harry Potter.
Rocky V
Rocky IV saw the death of Apollo Creed and the defeat of communism (though it would take four more years for the Berlin Wall to come down). This sequel takes a much more local approach, with Rocky bankrupt and retired, and playing off the relationship with his son (Stallone’s own son Sage) vs. the mentorship Rocky provides to an up-and-coming boxer named Tommy Gunn (real life boxer Tommy Morrison, who later won the WBO Heavyweight Championship in a 1993 fight against George Foreman). Richard Grant portrays a caricature of Don King, playing up the seedy side of the boxing business. The traditional Rocky movie climax with a ring fight is replaced in this story with a street fight. Reviews were poor and audiences clearly chose Home Alone instead. Rocky V opened at #2 with $14.0 million from 2,053 theaters (less than half the average of Home Alone). It grossed only $40 million in the U.S., the weakest performer of the franchise. The film also earned seven Razzie Award nominations. It would be another 16 years before Stallone returned to the series with Rocky Balboa, and the story continues this Thanksgiving with Michael B. Jordan starring as the son of Apollo in Creed.
The Rescuers Down Under
Disney had a success with with their animated adventure The Rescuers in 1977, spawning this sequel (one of the few in Disney’s history of animated films). Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor return to voice Bernard and Miss Bianca, a pair of mice who solve problems just like secret agents. John Candy provides the voice of an albatross. The plot’s setting in in Australia may have been influenced by the success of Crocodile Dundee four years earlier. This was an unusual Disney animated release in that it featured no musical numbers. Reviews were decent but it did not fare well against the competition for an audience this weekend, resulting in the weakest box office performance of Disney’s modern releases. The Rescuers Down Under opened at #4 behind last week’s Child’s Play 2 with $3.5 million from 1,230 theaters. It grossed just under $28 million in the U.S., a fraction of the $79 million earned by The Little Mermaid the year before.
30 years ago - November 15, 1985
Once Bitten
Most audiences may think of Jim Carrey’s movie career as starting in 1994 with Ace Ventura, but did you know that he not only starred in a movie nearly 10 years earlier but that it also opened at #1? Credit his rising success as a stand up comic in the early 1980s; Carrey auditioned for SNL the same season that Eddie Murphy started, and was featured on The Tonight Show at age 20. In this comedy he plays one of the few remaining virgins in Los Angeles who becomes a target of a vampire played by Lauren Hutton. Once Bitten received poor reviews but still opened ahead of Jagged Edge (#2 in its seventh week) with $4 million from 1,095 theaters, and eventually exceeded its budget with a $9.9 million gross.
Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer
Rainbow Brite was a franchise character developed by Hallmark Cards and Mattel in the early 1980s with dolls and and animated primetime specials. This film was produced by the same company behind Inspector Gadget and The Littles. Reviews were weak and audience interest wasn’t any better. Rainbow Brite opened at #7 with $1.8 million from 1,088 theaters and went on to gross $4.8 million.
And an extra anniversary this week...
35 years ago - November 14, 1980
Raging Bull
A couple of months ago I pointed out that we were celebrating the 25th anniversary of arguably one of Scorsese’s best - Goodfellas. The other side of that argument could be Raging Bull, Scorsese’s biopic of boxer Jake La Motta. Robert De Niro (in his fourth project with Scorsese) famously gained 60 pounds to portray the middleweight boxer in decline. Cathy Moriarty plays his wife in her film debut, and Joe Pesci plays his brother Joey. The movie was not initially well received by audiences, perhaps due to the violent relationships in the story and maybe even due to the film being shot in black and white. But Raging Bull went on to receive eight Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and the three main roles) and wins for De Niro and Editing. Ten years after release, the movie was entered into the National Film Registry and 35 years on, it’s still recognized as one of Scorsese’s best.
Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!