Marquee History

Week 34 - 2015

By Max Braden

August 21, 2015

Great moments in movie history.

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Welcome to Marquee History, the weekly column that takes you back to a time when you - or your parents - were younger. Prepare to become nostalgic (and shocked) at how much time has passed when you recall what was new in theaters 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years ago.

This week's highlights are the 15th anniversary of Bring It On and the 30th anniversary of Better Off Dead.

Here are the movies that premiered on theater marquees this week...

10 years ago - August 26, 2005

The Brothers Grimm
Matt Damon and Heath Ledger star as the famous brothers who are initially con men until they actually encounter the supernatural. Production struggled from financing to shoot to editing, resulting in a movie that looked interesting but received weak reviews. The Brothers Grimm opened at #2 on The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s second weekend with $15 million. It eventually earned $37 million in the U.S. and only managed to cover its $88 million budget with the help of foreign markets.

The Cave
Cole Hauser, Daniel Dae Kim, Morris Chestnut, Lena Headey, and Piper Perabo star in this spelunking horror movie. Reviews were poor and The Cave opened at #5 with $6.1 million, struggling to reach $15 million in its theatrical run. A much better cave thriller, The Descent, was released the following summer.

Undiscovered
This aspiring-performer drama from music video director Meiert Avis has basically one claim to fame: reviews were so bad that after opening in moderate release with only $676,048 (a paltry $518 per site average), the movie shed over five hundred screens and only brought in $91,748 for its second weekend - an 86% drop. Pop star Ashlee Simpson earned a Razzie Award nomination for her role.




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15 years ago - August 25, 2000

Bring It On
Before Pitch Perfect, before Stomp the Yard, before Step Up, and even before Save the Last Dance (but, okay, years after Rappin’), Bring It On was a hybrid of high school comedy, sports drama, and team dance off. Kristen Dunst leads a cheerleading team as they face off against rivals led by Gabrielle Union. This was the first directorial effort by Peyton Reed (who has gone on to direct other notable films like 2015’s Ant Man). Bring It On opened at #1 and would stay there for three weeks. It earned a strong $17 million opening and $68 million domestically. Its success spawned four DVD sequels within the decade and even a Broadway musical in 2011.

The Art of War
Wesley Snipes stars in this action film as a secret agent for the United Nations. Anne Archer plays his boss and Donald Sutherland plays the UN Secretary-General. Reviews were poor but The Art of War did manage to open at #2 with $10.4 million. Ultimately, though, its $30 million gross fell far short of the movie’s $60 million budget. Snipes would star in a sequel eight years later.

The Crew
With Clint Eastwood’s old-guys-in-space movie Space Cowboys still only a few weeks into release, Richard Dreyfuss, Burt Reynolds, Dan Hedaya, and Seymour Cassel star in this old-guys-in-crime comedy. Reviews were poor and The Crew opened at #8 on 1,510 screens with $4 million for the weekend. It only earned $13 million in its run versus the $90 million earned by Space Cowboys. You know what they say: crime doesn’t pay.


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