The end of June is an interesting time, moviewise. While huge films can and have been released on the month's final weekend, it usually serves as a bit of a breather, sandwitched in between the huge, frequently animated mid-June openings and the huge July 4th weekend openings. So the end of June films tend to be a bit smaller.
One Year Ago--June 28, 2019:
#1 Movie:
Toy Story 4--$59.7 million
New Wide Releases:
Annabelle Comes Home--2/$20.3 million/$74.2 million/37/65%/53--The third entry in the spin-off series from the Conjuring movies (and the third sentient doll--and second evil sentient doll--movie of the last two weeks), this one catches up to the timeline of the main series, with the possessed doll haunting McKenna Grace, the daughter of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, over a weekend while her parents are out of town. Perhaps moving to mid-summer was a mistake, as this underperformed the grosses of the first two Annabelles. Still, it wouldn't be a big surprise to see a Annabelle 4 somewhere down the pike.
Director: Gary Dauberman
Yesterday--3/$17 million/$73.3 million/38/63%/55--This comedic fantasy starred Himesh Patel, who had previously mostly worked on British TV, as a musician who is hit by a bus and wakes up in a world where the Beatles never existed. Luckily, he still remembers all their songs and becomes a superstar with their compositions. The film doesn't bother to explore what popular music would have been like for the last 60 years without the most influential group of all time, but, benefiting a film written by Richard Curtis, focuses on the awkward relationship between Patel and childhood friend Lily James. Kate McKinnon played Patel's manager and Ed Sheeran played himself.
Director: Danny Boyle
Five Years Ago--June 26, 2015:
#1 Movie:
Jurassic World--$54.5 million
New Wide Releases:
Ted 2--3/$33.5 million/$81.5 million/37/45%/48--Ted proved to be an unexpected smash in 2012, but the sequel ended up being one of 2015's bigger disappointments. Seth MacFarlane, who also directed, again voices sentient teddy bear Ted with his Peter Griffin voice, who has married his human girlfriend and wants to adopt a kid, but has to establish that he is a person first, with the help of best friend Mark Wahlberg and attorney Amanda Seyfried. MacFarlane, who has apparently befriended everyone in Hollywood, assembled a killer cast, including Morgan Freeman and John Slattery, with a cameo from Liam Neeson, among others, and narration by Patrick Stewart. With the film being a disappointment, MacFarlane has largely returned to focusing on his various TV series.
Director: Seth MacFarlane
Max--4/$12.2 million/$42.7 million/68/38%/47--In this pro-military, boy and his dog movie, released ahead of the July 4th holiday, a family adopts the Marine dog trained by their late son, who was killed in action in Afghanistan. That might have made for a nice movie by itself, but for some reason they have to throw in the dead Marine's evil friend, who is selling stolen military weapons to a drug cartel. Thomas Haden Church and Lauren Graham play the parents. This was followed by a sequel with none of the original cast, that got a very brief theatrical run in 2017 before being released for home viewing.
Director: Boaz Yakin
Ten Years Ago--June 25, 2010:
#1 Movie:
Toy Story 3--$59.3 million
New Wide Releases:
Grown Ups--2/$40.5 million/$162 million/15/10%/30--A year after Adam Sandler seemed to sharply criticize the cheap, lazy comedies he had previously churned out in Funny People, Sandler starred in the cheap, lazy Grown Ups. And since that movie made more than three times what Funny People made, well, we know who had the last laugh. The plot had Sandler reuniting with childhood friends Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade after their old basketball coach died. The movie chugs through gags and vignettes as the quintet discover that they really haven't grown up that much after all. As usual, Sandler is able to attract a solid supporting cast, including Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph as the wives of Sandler, James, and Rock, respectively, and Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, and Steve Buscemi as members of a team that Sandler et al. had beaten 30 years earlier. The film would be followed by a sequel in 2013.
Director: Dennis Dugan
Knight and Day--3/$20.1 million/$76.4 million/45/52%/46--Tom Cruise's career slump began in earnest with the disappointing returns on this standard-issue action comedy. He played a superspy on the run from the CIA who drags an unwitting Cameron Diaz into the plot to either steal or sell a top secret new energy source to an arms dealer. Peter Sarsgaard played another CIA agent, Viola Davis played the head of the CIA, Paul Dano was the energy source's inventor, and a then-unknown Gal Gadot played a henchwoman of the arms dealer. Critics found the whole thing perfectly silly, and Cruise's weakening star power couldn't draw a large audience.
Director: James Mangold
New Limited Releases:
Restrepo--$1.3 million/183/97%/85--Journalist Sebastian Junger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington accepted an assignment from Vanity Fair to spend a year embedded with an Army platoon patrolling Afghanistan's Korangal Valley, one of the most dangerous places in the country. While there, they filmed the experiences of the platoon, and turned the footage into this documentary. The film captured fire-fights, negotiations with local warlords, and the events of a major operation in the valley. The highly acclaimed documentary would be nominated for an Oscar. Only two months after the Oscar ceremony, Hetherington would be killed covering the rebellion in Libya. Junger would direct a follow-up documentary, Korengal, that would be released in 2014.
Director: Tim Hetherington, Sebastain Junger
Dogtooth--$0.1 million/324/93%/73--Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos had his international breakthrough with this deeply disturbing drama about two parents who keep their grown children prisoner on their estate, with no knowledge of the outside world. Naturally, this leads to bizarre behavior on the part of the kids, including incest and animal cruelty. Despite being little-seen by general audiences in the US, the film would be nominated for Foreign Language Film.
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Fifteen Years Ago--July 1, 2005:
New Wide Releases:
War of the Worlds--1/$64.9 million/$234.3 million/4/75%/73--Steven Spielberg directed this updated adaption of H.G. Wells's classic alien-invasion novel, a long way from his last film that involved extra-terrestrials visiting Earth. Tom Cruise played a divorced everyman (who just happened to look like Tom Cruise), whose weekend with his teenage son (Justin Chatwin) and preteen daughter (Dakota Fanning) is interrupted when the aliens invade and decimate the city, forcing them to go on the run from the bloodthirsty invaders. Tim Robbins played another survivor who had apparently lost his mind, and there were cameos from Gene Berry (his final role) and Ann Robinson, the stars of the 1953 adaption of the novel. The film would be nominated for three Oscars, for Visual Effects and both Sound awards. Continuing Spielberg's occasional pattern of directing a summer blockbuster and an Oscar film in the same year, he would have his terrorist drama Munich ready for Christmas.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Rebound--7/$5 million/$16.8 million/126/14%/36--Oh hey, a comedy about a guy who is stuck being the coach of a bunch of loser kids! Will he overcome his initial apathy to find himself genuinely caring about his charges and is able to whip them into shape? Given the returns for this PG-rated Martin Lawrence vehicle, in which he played a disgraced college basketball coach whose only job offer is from his old junior high, it seems likely that most moviegoers already knew the answer to those questions when they decided not to buy a ticket.
Director: Steve Carr
Twenty Years Ago--June 30, 2000:
New Wide Releases:
The Perfect Storm--1/$41.3 million/$182.6 million/6/47%/59--In 1991, a commercial fishing boat with six crew members sailed into what turned out to be an unnamed hurricane off the coast of Massachusetts. As the crew (which included George Clooney as the captain, Mark Wahlberg, re-teaming with Clooney after the previous fall's Three Kings, John C. Reilly, William Fichtner, Allen Payne, and John Hawkes) battle for their very survival, the people back home (including Diane Lane and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) wait for them to come home. Karen Allen and Cherry Jones play crew members on a yacht that was also caught in the storm. Even though this was an unusually downbeat drama for the summer, the star power, action, special effects, and poster showing the tiny boat battling a giant wave helped make it one of the year's biggest films. It would receive Oscar nominations for Sound and Visual Effects.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
The Patriot--2/$22.4 million/$113.3 million/19/61%/63--Just in time for the 4th of July came this nearly three-hour drama starring Mel Gibson as a South Carolina plantation owner (a plantation, somewhat improbably, staffed entirely by free African-Americans) who gets caught up in the Revolution after his oldest son (Heath Ledger) is captured by the British. Jason Isaacs, then largely unknown to American audiences, played a sadistic British colonel, Chris Cooper played Gibson's former commanding officer from the French and Indian War who puts him in charge of his own militia, Joley Richardson played Gibson's sister-in-law, and Tom Wilkinson played British general Lord Cornwallis. This was a decided change of pace for director Roland Emmerich, whose previous films were all sci-fi and usually involved New York City getting destroyed. The Patriot would go head-to-head against The Perfect Storm at the Oscars for Sound (they would both lose to Gladiator), and it was also nominated for Score and Cinematography.
Director: Roland Emmerich
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle--5/$6.8 million/$26 million/89/43%/36--One of the summer's bigger flops, this adaption of the beloved Jay Ward cartoon has villians Boris (Jason Alexander), Natasha (Rene Russo) and Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro) escaping to the real world to try to take it over, with the government recruiting Rocky and Bullwinkle (who stay animated) to stop them. Piper Perabo played the FBI agent who helps out the duo. This got mostly bad reviews, and opening against two blockbusters and a week after Chicken Run, this didn't stand a chance.
Director: Des McAnuff
Twenty-Five Years Ago--June 30, 1995:
New Wide Releases:
Apollo 13--1/$25.4 million/$172.1 million/3/96%/77--Ron Howard directed this blockbuster docudrama about the nearly ill-fated Apollo 13 mission of 1970, when an explosion in an oxygen tank threatened to strand three astronauts (Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon) in outer space with no way to get home. Ed Harris played the NASA flight director, who was leading the team on the ground in figuring how to safely return the craft and the astronauts to Earth. Gary Sinise played another astronaut who had been bumped from the mission, and Kathleen Quinlan played Hanks's wife. The film would end up as the second-highest grossing film of the summer and would earn 9 Oscar nominations, including Picture, Supporting Actor for Harris, Supporting Actress for Quinlan, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Visual Effects, and Original Score. It would win Sound and Film Editing. Oddly, neither Hanks, who was coming off two straight Best Actor wins, nor Howard were nominated, though Howard would win the Director's Guild Award.
Director: Ron Howard.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie--4/$13.1 million/$38.2 million/45/37%/40--The kids TV show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which blended newly-shot scenes of American actors playing normal teenagers who are recruited to save Earth from evil aliens with stock footage from a Japanese show showing suited actors fighting a variety of monsters, became an out-of-nowhere smash when it premiered in the fall of 1993. The movie version, which used the TV show's cast (of which only Amy Jo Johnson did anything significant outside of the Power Rangers franchise), had the Rangers battling an evil wizard who emerges from a 6,000 year hibernation with designs to rule the world. Kids liked it, parents who couldn't talk their offspring into seeing Pocahontas instead tolerated it, and critics were utterly confused by it. Even though the film wasn't a huge success, it was followed by another feature film in 1997, and various iterations of the TV franchise have run nearly continuously for nearly 30 years now.
Director: Bryan Spicer
Judge Dredd--5/$12.3 million/$34.7 million/52/19%/NA--In 1985, Sylvester Stallone starred in two of the three biggest hits of the year. Ten years later, his big summer blockbuster opened under a cheesy kid's movie. Based on the British comic book series (that at the time, was obscure in the US), Stallone played the titular judge, which in the future, served as not just a judge, but as policeman, jury, and executioner of wrongdoers. After being convicted of a murder he did not commit, he escapes imprisonment and returns to the city to clear his name. Armand Assante played Stallone's evil brother, Rob Schneider played a hacker who becomes Stallone's unwitting assistant, Max Von Sydow played Stallone's mentor, and Diane Lane played a rookie judge who teams with Stallone. Fans of the comic were aghast, and audiences largely ignored the film.
Director: Danny Cannon
Thirty Years Ago--June 29, 1990:
New Wide Releases:
Days of Thunder--1/$15.5 million/$82.7 million/13/38%/60--Tom Cruise re-teamed with his Top Gun director Tony Scott and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to essentially make Top Gear. Instead of being a hotshot fighter pilot who plays by his own rules, this time he's a hotshot NASCAR driver who plays by his own rules. Robert Duvall plays the veteran mentor, Nicole Kidman (who Cruse met on this set and would marry before the end of the year) would be the reluctant love interest and Michael Rooker would be the rival-turned-friend. All that's missing is the best friend who dies halfway through. Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, and a young John C. Reilly (16 years before Talladega Nights) also co-star. The film did well, but didn't come close to matching Top Gun's box office. It did get a Sound nomination at the Oscars.
Director: Tony Scott
Ghost Dad--6/$4.8 million/$24.7 million/52/6%/NA--While Bill Cosby had a pretty good eye for movie projects during the 70s, that ability completely dried up by the time he signed up for The Devil and Max Devlin (where he played, appropriately enough, Satan) in 1980. Ten years later, this woebegone family comedy, his final theatrical starring vehicle (though he'd play supporting roles in other bad movies), featured America's most beloved rapist as a single dad who is seemingly killed in a car accident. Instead of giving the film a happy ending right then and there, Cosby unfortunately comes back as a ghost determined to make sure his kids (whom, being a workaholic, he's been neglecting) are well taken care of before he departs the earthly realm. You can probably guess the rest. Not only was this Cosby's final film as a leading man, it was also the final film directed by Sidney Poitier, someone else who really should have known better.
Director: Sidney Poitier
Thirty-Five Years Ago--June 28, 1985:
New Wide Releases:
Pale Rider--1/$9.1 million/$41.1 million/18/93%/61--1985 marked a major attempt by Hollywood to jump-start the then moribund Western genre, with three major studio efforts over the summer. The first, Rustler's Rhapsody, had come and gone quickly in May, but the other two, which would be released within three weeks of each other, would prove far more successful. The first of the mid-summer duo was Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood's first straight-up western since 1976's The Outlaw Josey Wales. This film, which serves as an unofficial sequel to 1973's High Plains Drifter, has Eastwood playing another Man With No Name who arrives in an independent mining camp being terrorized by the local mining company who want the land for themselves. Michael Moriarty and Carrie Snodgress play two of the inhabits of the camp who Eastwood befriends.
Director: Clint Eastwood
St. Elmo's Fire--4/$6.1 million/$37.8 million/44%/35--The quintessential Brat Pack movie is this soapy drama about a group of recent college graduates (Emilo Estivez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Mare Winningham--three of whom had played high school juniors just a few months earlier in the other quintessential Brat Pack movie, The Breakfast Club) who find that the real world is a lot tougher than they thought in college. Andie MacDowell had a supporting role.
Director: Joel Schumacher
Forty Years Ago--June 27, 1980:
No new major releases, either wide or limited.
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