Marquee History

Week 15 - 2016

By Max Braden

April 11, 2016

Nope, nothing at all totally horrifying in this scene, nope

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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 anniversary highlights include the 10th anniversary of Kinky Boots and 15th anniversary of Bridget Jones’s Diary.

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

10 years ago - April 14, 2006

Scary Movie 4
Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Charlie Sheen, and Simon Rex return for the fourth entry in this horror spoof series from director David Zucker, this time drawing on elements from Saw and Saw II, The Village, The Grudge, and War of the Worlds. Reviews were poor, and Carmen Electra later won the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress for her role in this movie. That didn’t stop audiences though, who gave Scary Movie 4 the second-best April opening to date, behind Anger Management’s $42 million in 2003. Scary Movie 4 opened with $40.2 million from 3,602 theaters and went on to gross $90.7 million, the third best of the series. The fifth and final entry in the series followed in 2013.

The Wild
Arriving a less than a year after the successful DreamWorks animated comedy Madagascar, this Disney computer-animated adventure bore enough similarities to make audiences think it was a rip-off. In this film, Kiefer Sutherland voices a lion living in New York City’s Central Park Zoo who follows his reckless son on a boat to Africa. Eddie Izzard voices a koala and William Shatner voices a wildebeest. Critics were not impressed and the movie was not as successful as Madagascar. The Wild opened at #4 with $9.6 million from 2,854 theaters and earned $37.3 million in the U.S., compared to the $193 million for Madagascar.



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Kinky Boots
Kinky Boots is one of those stories that brilliantly demonstrates how necessity is the mother of invention, and also comedy. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a drag queen whose colleagues need a strong heel to support their weight, and Joel Edgerton plays a shoe factory owner who needs new customers. And of course, we the audience need to see the stuffy British squirm a little. Sarah-Jane Potts and Nick Frost co-star. Ejiofor had first gained notice in 2002 with Dirty Pretty Things, and had been steadily working up, also appearing in Inside Man which was still in the top ten this weekend. Kinky Boots opened at only nine theaters this weekend and peaked at 127 with a total of $1.8 million, but Ejiofor later earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role. The film was then adapted as a Broadway musical in 2013.

Hard Candy
Hard Candy is the film that really marks the beginning of Ellen Page’s film career. In this thriller, she plays a 14-year-old (at age 18 while filming) who seems to be about to become the sexual exploit of a man (Patrick Wilson) twice her age until she really turns the tables on him. Though the film only saw a peak release of 152 theaters and a total gross of $1 million, it received numerous accolades on the film festival circuit, especially for Page’s performance. She would get her breakthrough role in Juno the following year.

Also in limited release this weekend: Preaching to the Choir, a comedy starring Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Tichina Arnold, The Notorious Bettie Pagie, a biopic starring Gretchen Mol, and Mozart and the Whale, a drama starring Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell.


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