Marquee History
Week 47 - 2015
By Max Braden
November 23, 2015
Casino
The Goodfellas are back together again - writer Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci tell another mafia story, this one set in Las Vegas during the 1970s and early 1980s. De Niro plays gambling handicapper Sam Rothstein, whose attempts to make quiet moves are difficult due to Pesci’s hot-headed character. Sharon Stone plays Sam’s wife, and her descent into the grips of various vices earned Stone an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win. Reviews were good but not quite as strong as those for Goodfellas. Casino opened at #5 with $9.9 million ($14.5 million five-day) on a moderate release of 1,616 theaters. It grossed a total of $42 million in the U.S., slightly less than the $46 million for Goodfellas five years earlier.
Nick of Time
Johnny Depp stars in this thriller about a man who is told he must assassinate someone or his wife will be killed. Director John Badham had a mix of dramas, comedies, and action in his filmography, but the selling point for this movie was that it took place in real-time to enhance the tension. This being years before devil-may-care roles like Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp’s persona in most movies of this period was fairly bookish and sensitive. Christopher Walken co-stars as the villain. Reviews were weak, and Nick of Time opened at #9 with $2.7 million ($3.8 million five-day) from 1,849 theaters. It left theaters with $8.1 million.
25 years ago - November 23, 1990
Three Men and a Little Lady
Three Men and a Baby was a huge comedy hit in 1987, becoming the year’s top grossing movie with $167 million earned in the U.S. Three Men and a Little Lady brings back Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson as the three single dads of a five-year-old daughter. Unfortunately the sequel didn’t have the spark of the first movie and Ted Danson’s peak fame with Cheers didn’t provide much of a boost. Three Men and a Little Lady opened at #2 behind Home Alone with $13 million from 1,281 theaters. A few weeks later it was further eclipsed by the sequel to Look Who’s Talking and ultimately brought in $71 million from its U.S. run.
Predator 2
Moving on from two high profile Lethal Weapon movies, Danny Glover stars in the sequel to the hit sci-fi thriller from 1987. None of the original main cast appear here, though Anna Gonsalves has a cameo. This time a Predator alien is in a near-future Los Angeles “with a few days to kill” (per the movie’s tagline), hunting Jamaican drug dealers and pulling Glover’s LAPD officer into the violence. Gary Busey plays a government agent secretly attempting to nab one of the aliens (just like in Aliens!). Maria Conchita Alonso and Bill Paxton co-star. Reviews were favorable to Glover but not the movie itself. Predator 2 opened at #4 behind Dances With Wolves with $8.7 million from 1,950 theaters, a much wider release than Three Men but with a weaker per-site average. Predator 2 earned a total of $30 million in the U.S., well short of the $59 million gross from Schwarzenegger’s first Predator. Two crossover movies in the Alien vs. Predator franchise were released in 2004 and 2007, with a third solely Predator entry released in 2010.
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