Snapshot: May 22-25, 1992
By Joel West
March 12, 2009
The box office performance of a film these days is almost as important as the film's quality itself. As unfortunate as that may be, the facts are the facts. So while your movie may be as good as It's a Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, or even The Shawshank Redemption (all box office disappointments in their own right), if the marketing, release date, and apparent quality don't resonate with audiences, its commercial success could suffer. As with everything in history, time produces clarity. This column will take a look back at a specific time at the movies and try and determine the factors that led to a movie's success or failure.
Pauly Shore...movie star?
Relative to production costs and expectations, that very terrifying string of words was quite the reality 17 years ago. Even more outrageous is his film debut went up against a very popular sci-fi series and a Tom Cruise-Ron Howard collaboration!!!
Not long ago, the summer movie season always kicked off on Memorial Day weekend; whereas the first weekend in May is the norm these days. However in 1992, a crowded holiday weekend prompted Lethal Weapon 3 to open a week earlier to safeguard the millions it was predicted to earn. The payoff was substantial, as the formidable series had its then highest opening at $33 million (the second biggest opening ever at the time). Clearly Lethal Weapon 3 was setting the summer bar quite high for all newcomers and the field would be wide open up until Batman Returns would lay waste to all competition on June 19th (its predecessor had the biggest opening at the time). Memorial Day weekend would see two high-profile contenders and a scrappy underdog vying to steal the top spot from Riggs and Murtaugh.
The most likely candidate to unseat Lethal Weapon 3 was also a third entry into a very popular and highly regarded action series. Alien 3 was at the time billed as the expected conclusion in the Alien series. Series star Sigourney Weaver had already fought an Alien for Ridley Scott (to the tune of $78 million) and Aliens for James Cameron ($85 million); and had to be nothing short of begged to return for a third (the $5 million payday certainly helped). To say the film had a troubled production is an understatement in the highest regard (the documentary that accompanies the film on DVD is more interesting than the film itself). First time director David Fincher took over a project that had been bounced around for years and had to start shooting without a finished script. Post-production was reportedly even worse as the studio took the final product from Fincher and reworked it on their own.
So why exactly was the film likely to do any business at the box office?
Well, for starters, the first two kicked major ass! Scott and Cameron had each provided their own artistic stamp to the sci-fi series and in turn each are widely regarded as classics. Weaver was (and still is) the greatest action heroine of all time. And the series' other star (you know, the one with the name in title) is one of the greatest modern day monster-creations. Troubled production be damned, people wanted to see an Alien film. The addition of Fincher was at the time considered a novelty (the now tired trend of music video director turned film director), so fans and critics alike were curious to see what this guy had up his sleeve. Couple that with an alleged surprise ending and there was a real possibility that all the headaches that went into making the $50 million film had paid off.
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