“‘Nobody likes to watch people getting eaten by lions.”
Apparently this was the response by the late Sumner Redstone during his National Amusement exhibition days after he saw a screening of the 1981 Tom Skerritt lion movie, Savage Harvest, relayed to me by an exhibition source who overheard him.
As funny as Redstone’s reaction was, it’s an axiom that has rung true: Certain animal-eat-people movies just don’t work. Moviegoers chomp on sharks movies like Jaws and Meg, but other treacherous animal movies aren’t prime to high openings, i.e. Paramount’s alligator movie Crawl and more recently Universal with its Idris Elba title Beast — which was a lion move.
However, this weekend Universal proved that everybody likes to watch people get eaten by bears, as their R-rated Elizabeth Banks-directed Cocaine Bear opened to $23M.
How did Universal...
Apparently this was the response by the late Sumner Redstone during his National Amusement exhibition days after he saw a screening of the 1981 Tom Skerritt lion movie, Savage Harvest, relayed to me by an exhibition source who overheard him.
As funny as Redstone’s reaction was, it’s an axiom that has rung true: Certain animal-eat-people movies just don’t work. Moviegoers chomp on sharks movies like Jaws and Meg, but other treacherous animal movies aren’t prime to high openings, i.e. Paramount’s alligator movie Crawl and more recently Universal with its Idris Elba title Beast — which was a lion move.
However, this weekend Universal proved that everybody likes to watch people get eaten by bears, as their R-rated Elizabeth Banks-directed Cocaine Bear opened to $23M.
How did Universal...
- 2/26/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
Savage Harvest is a 1981 movie starring Tom Skerritt as the patriarch of a family under siege by a pride of lions in Africa. It is awesome. Heatstroke gives the impression early on that it’s aiming for a similar feel — albeit with the lions replaced by hyenas — but what follows is nothing of the sort. There is only one hyena. And it’s less of a carnivorous threat than it is the reassuring reincarnation of Stephen Dorff (probably). Paul (Dorff) is a hyena expert teaching classes on hyenas. The divorced father of one is planning a trip to South Africa with his girlfriend Tally (Svetlana Metkina), but a call from his distraught ex-wife worried that their daughter Jo (Maisie Williams) is using drugs leads to the ornery teenager joining the research safari. Tally has little interest in taking care of a child, but she tries her best in the face of Jo’s constant attitude and ungratefulness...
- 7/8/2014
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.
The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.
The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.
- 11/5/2008
- Fangoria
The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.
The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.
The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.
- 11/5/2008
- Fangoria
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