![]() ![]() ($663 million in its original 1982 release). by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Imagesīy the end of 1990, Ghost’s $505.702 million global cume was just behind Star Wars (”just” $503 million in its original release and $530 million counting reissues) and E.T. It went 14 weekends without a weekend drop above 13% and that mid-November frame (-30%) was only the second time it would dip below 13% in its first 23 weekends.Īmerican actors Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore on the set of Ghost, directed by Jerry Zucker. It was still in over 1,700 theaters in mid-November when Home Alone opened with $17 million. ![]() It expanded from 1,101 theaters in weekend one to 1,766 theaters in weekend four. In its first nine weekends in theaters (up until the weekend after Labor Day), it would bounce around in the top two spots of the weekend box office, ranking number one on frames two, four, eight and nine. The film earned decent (if not necessarily superlative) reviews and opened in second place (behind the second weekend of Die Hard 2: Die Harder) with $12.1 million. ![]() #Ghost patrick swayze demi moore movieAnd it had Patrick Swayze, three years after Dirty Dancing (which was the first PG-13 movie for a generation of young girls) and five years after Red Dawn (the first PG-13 movie period), again proving himself to be much more interesting and bankable as a lover than as a fighter. It wasn’t necessarily unsafe for kids, but it was absolutely aimed at adults and was just violent and sensual enough to make the teens think they were getting away with something. The manner in which the main villain is dispatched is, no spoilers, genuinely grotesque. It was a PG-13 movie, five years after the creation of that MPAA designation, back when that meant something, with (sensual but not vulgar) sex scenes between its gorgeous stars and bloody violence. It was a steamy romance, it was a supernatural horror story, it was a crime drama, it was a mystery and it was even (in the form of Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar-winning turn as a psychic) a comedy. The film’s first-act pottery-specific sex scene has been parodied countless times, but less noted even at the time was how the film essentially checked off almost every box in terms of audience interest. In the case of Ghost, a PG-13 original romantic thriller from a director famous for bawdy satires would become a true “all-quadrant” blockbuster and become (at the time) one of the biggest hits ever.įor those who came in late, Jerry Zucker and Bruce Joel Rubin’s Ghost told the tale of a young banker (Patrick Swayze) who is murdered in a seemingly random mugging only to, well, what’s the title of the movie again?, in order to seemingly avenge his own murder and protect his girlfriend (Demi Moore). Both the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore supernatural thriller and the Meryl Streep/Amanda Seyfried musical represented an unconventional way to make lots of money at the global box office, a path which was mostly ignored even as they out-grossed bigger preordained summer blockbusters. Both were unexpectedly successful on a global scale, despite opening in a summer packed with conventional boy-friendly franchise offerings. Okay, so I missed the big 30th anniversary of Ghost by two days, but we’re also two days out from the 12th anniversary of Mamma Mia! In a skewed way, those films are intertwined. ![]()
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