Marquee History
Week 6 - 2016
By Max Braden
February 5, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This weekend’s highlights are the record-setting return of Hannibal Lecter, the 25th anniversary of L.A. Story, and the 30th anniversary of Hannah and Her Sisters.
Here are the movies that premiered on theater marquees this week...
10 years ago - February 10, 2006
The Pink Panther
In this remake, Steve Martin takes on the role first brought to film by Peter Sellers in 1963 as the inept French inspector Jacques Clouseau. The plot involves the theft of the Pink Panther diamond ring from a pop star played by Beyonce. Kevin Kline plays Clouseau’s superior officer, and Jean Reno plays Clouseau’s smarter but conciliatory assistant Gilbert Ponton. While the Sellers movies involved slapstick, they were generally geared toward adult audiences. This Steve Martin version was much more geared to younger family audiences. Martin’s similarly toned Cheaper By the Dozen 2, released at Christmas eight weeks earlier, was still in theaters this weekend. The Pink Panther won the weekend along with the other three new releases, opening with $20.2 million from 3,477 theaters. Barely overcoming a hefty $80 million production budget, it grossed $82 million in the U.S. out of $158 million worldwide, making it the best performer of the 11-movie franchise. Martin and Reno returned for The Pink Panther 2 in 2009.
Final Destination 3
The third entry in this horror film series starts with high school students escaping death in an amusement park roller-coaster tragedy. Over the rest of the story, death comes for them one by one. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman star. Reviews weren’t great, but the point of this series is really about the Rube-Goldberg approach to each death scene, which makes it as much a dark comedy as a horror film. Final Destination 3 opened at #2 for the weekend with $19.1 million from 2,880 theaters (the best per-site average of the weekend). Its final gross of $54 million is the second-best of the series, which is comprised of five films. The next entry, The Final Destination (but the fourth out of five), came in 2009.
Curious George
The long-running children’s book character gets a feature-length animated film. Will Ferrell voices the Man With the Yellow Hat (finally given a name for the movie: Ted), a museum guide who comes across a curious monkey while in Africa. The monkey follows Ted back to the city and causes problems while Ted tries to save his museum from being shut down due to budget issues. Drew Barrymore voices a teacher named Maggie. The film’s traditional animation style and calm pace, true to the original material, both impressed some critics and underwhelmed others. Curious George opened at #3 with $14.7 million from 2,566 theaters and went on to earn $58 million, just over its production budget. A sequel was released straight-to-DVD in 2010.
Firewall
I’m a huge Harrison Ford fan and I had completely forgotten this movie existed. Ford stars as computer security specialist coerced by Paul Bettany’s thief to hack into bank accounts and steal $100 million or lose his family. In similar style to Air Force One, Ford’s character gets mad and turns the tables on the villains. Virginia Madsen, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Robert Forster, Robert Patrick, and Alan Arkin appear in supporting roles. Reviews of this thriller were poor. Firewall opened at #4 with $13.6 million from 2,840 theaters. It earned a total of $48.7 million, which was at least an improvement over his previous film, Hollywood Homicide.
15 years ago - February 9, 2001
Hannibal
When The Silence of the Lambs was released in February 1991 (covered in next week’s Marquee History!) and Hannibal Lecter was identified as one of the most iconic movie villains of all time, audiences were naturally hungry for more. But Hollywood had to wait on author Thomas Harris to publish the next installment of the saga in 1999. Ridley Scott directed this adaptation from a screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian.
Set 10 years after the events of Lambs, the story finds Dr. Hannibal Lecter residing in Florence, Italy until he is triggered into returning to the United States due to his only surviving victim’s plans for revenge. Anthony Hopkins again plays Lecter, but Julianne Moore replaces Jodie Foster as FBI agent Clarice Starling. Gary Oldman plays the plot’s instigator, with Ray Liotta and Giancarlo Giannini in supporting roles. Critics gave the film good reviews but felt it was not as good as Silence of the Lambs and too gory.
In any case, the return of Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter was irresistible to audiences. Hannibal opened at #1 with $58 million from 3,230 theaters. This made it the best February opening of all time by a large margin - Scream 3 had set the record with $34 million the previous year. It was also the biggest R-rated opening of all time (beating Scary Movie from 2000), and the third biggest opening weekend ever. But 2001 turned out to be a strong year and six other films had bigger opening weekend grosses after February. In the end, Hannibal had grossed $165 million in the U.S. of $351 million total worldwide. The next film in the series was the prequel Red Dragon in 2002, again featuring Hopkins, but in a time before Clarice Starling’s character. Hannibal remains the best performer in the series by nominal figures and comes in just behind The Silence of the Lambs when adjusted for inflation.
Saving Silverman
This comedy from frequent Adam Sandler director Dennis Dugan stars Jason Biggs as Darren Silverman, a guy about to marry his emotionally controlling girlfriend Judith, played by Amanda Peet. His friends, played by Steve Zahn and Jack Black, concoct a series of desperate measures to break them up, including kidnapping. Amanda Detmer and R. Lee Ermey play supporting roles, and Neil Diamond is featured in a cameo. Biggs had his breakthrough hit in 1999 with American Pie, with the sequel to follow later in 2001. Reviews of this film were weak. Saving Silverman opened at #3 with $7.4 million from 2,467 theaters and only earned $19.4 million, short of its $22 million budget.
20 years ago - February 9, 1996
Broken Arrow
Director John Woo’s second American release starred John Travolta and Christian Slater in an action thriller about a stolen nuclear warhead. Howie Long, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo, Frank Whaley, and Bob Gunton appear in supporting roles. Reviews were mixed, but audience response was good enough to help establish Woo in Hollywood and continued keeping Travolta’s name up in the box office press. Broken Arrow opened at #1 with $15.5 million from 2,388 theaters. It grossed $70 million in the U.S. and $79 million in foreign markets. Woo and Travolta worked together again the following year on Face/Off.
Beautiful Girls
Matt Dillon leads an ensemble cast in this R-rated buddy comedy set at a high school reunion. Timothy Hutton, Noah Emmerich, Michael Rapaport, Lauren Holly, Rosie O’Donnell, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Mira Sorvino, and Uma Thurman co-star. Reviews of the acting and chemistry were good. In moderately wide release, Beautiful Girls opened at #7 with $2.7 million from 752 theaters for a decent per-site average. It went on to earn $10.5 million.
25 years ago - February 8, 1991
Sleeping with the Enemy
Just a year before, Julia Roberts had rocketed to stardom with her vibrant laughter in Pretty Woman. Here she appeared in a darker thriller, based on the 1987 novel by Nancy Price. Roberts stars as the wife of an emotionally and physically abusive husband (played by Patrick Bergin) who fakes her own death and assumes a new identity to escape him. Kevin Anderson plays a supporting role as a love interest in her new town. Reviews were poor, but no doubt Julia Roberts drew in audiences anyway; this was the film that finally knocked Home Alone out of the top box office spot in its 13th week. Sleeping With the Enemy opened at #1 with $13.8 million from 1,406 theaters and went on to earn $101 million, the 8th highest grossing movie of the year.
L.A. Story
There are plenty of candidates to choose from when picking a favorite Steve Martin movie, and this may not be the most common choice, but for me L.A. Story is by far my favorite and easily in my top 10 favorite movies ever. After an early movie career of shtick comedies such as The Jerk and The Man With Two Brains, Martin’s style had matured in the late 1980s with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Parenthood.
Now 45-years-old, he starred in this romantic comedy as a character who matures past frivolous entertainments to accept a deeper relationship. He plays Harris Telemacher, a superfluous weatherman in Los Angeles who is bored with both his own life and the superficial people and culture surrounding him. He’s enthralled when he meets a journalist from London named Sara (his real-life wife Victoria Tennant), but they are both technically unavailable and he struggles with how to impress her. Marilu Henner and Richard E. Grant play supporting roles, with Sarah Jessica Parker playing a bubbly retail girl named SanDeE* and Patrick Stewart appearing as a hilariously militant maître d’.
Martin’s script takes shots at the celebrity culture of L.A. and also its intellectual posturing. One of the best jokes in the movie takes place in an art museum where Harris goes on at length describing in vivid detail the people and scene in a painting, concluding, “When I see painting like this, I get emotionally... erect,” only to have the camera reveal an abstract mash of colors on the canvas. The film is funny and sweet, perfectly capturing the time and also the sharpness of Steve Martin’s satirical outlook. Critics mostly agreed with me, and while audiences may have been pleased, the movie wasn’t as financially successful as his career highlights. L.A. Story opened at #2 with $6.6 million from 1,091 theaters and went on to earn $28.8 million.
The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
As cheesy and ridiculous as it was, you’ll find some diehard fans of 1984’s fantasy adventure The NeverEnding Story (I know some of them personally) – but maybe not so diehard for its sequel. The cast has changed, but the characters return and the plot is similar: Bastian (Jonathan Brandis) goes back to Fantasia and must save it from destruction by the evil Xayide. Rock Biter, Falkor, and Atreyu all return. While the first film had earned good reviews (currently 81% Fresh at RottenTomatoes.com), this sequel was panned and holds a big fat zero at RottenTomatoes. The Neverending Story II did manage to come in at #4 for the weekend with $4.9 million from 1,188 theaters, but its final tally of $17.3 million was short of the $20 million for the first movie’s run in 1984. Still, there was a third entry in the series, released in a few markets in the U.S. in 1996.
30 years ago - February 7, 1986
F/X
Bryan Brown stars in this action thriller as a professional movie special effects artist who is hired by the government to fake an informant’s death, and of course things go wrong, leading him to employ his skills to survive. Brian Dennehy co-stars as police detective who becomes an ally. Jerry Orbach plays the witness and Angela Bassett makes her first film appearance as a TV reporter. Brown was known for being nominated for an Emmy for the miniseries The Thorn Birds three years earlier. Reviews for this movie were pretty good, but it couldn’t compete with holdovers Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Color Purple, Murphy’s Romance, and Out of Africa. F/X opened at #5 with $3.2 million from 914 theaters (half the per-site average of Down and Out). Eventually it went on to earn $20.3 million and generated a sequel that brought back both Brown and Dennehy five years later, and a 1996 television series that lasted two seasons.
Hannah and Her Sisters
This comedy from Woody Allen about family and romantic entanglements was one of his most successful and most critically acclaimed films in his career. Mia Farrow, Allen’s romantic partner and frequent lead actress in his films since 1982, stars as Hannah, with Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest as her sisters Lee and Holly. Michael Caine plays Hannah’s current husband who is obsessed with Lee, while Allen plays her hypochondriac former husband who pursues a relationship with Holly. Maureen O’Sullivan (Farrow’s real-life mother) and Lloyd Nolan have their own story as the parents of the sisters. The field of actors providing supporting roles includes Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Sam Waterston, Daniel Stern, Julie Kavner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, J. T. Walsh, John Turturro, and Tony Roberts.
The story takes place over two years, bookended by two Thanksgivings, and is told in segments. The tone is dialogue heavy, with Allen’s character providing the comic relief to the more serious drama in the other storylines and enough of a thematic presence that maybe the movie should have been titled Hannah and Mickey. Critics praised the acting, the writing, and the visual style of the film, all of which were rewarded at the Oscars a year after its release: a win for Allen’s screenplay, a rare win for both Supporting acting categories in the same movie (Caine and Wiest), and nominations for Best Picture, Director, Art Direction, and Film Editing. The film was also a hit at the box office. Hannah and Her sisters opened at 54 theaters this weekend with a $23,441 per-site average, enough to put it at #10 at the box office. After expanding to over 700 theaters in March, it went on to gross $40.0 million, making it the highest grossing movie of Allen’s career until 2011’s Midnight in Paris.
Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!