At almost three hours, Peter Jackson’s version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (filmed for $270 million back-to-back with the two sequels, to be released a year apart) was truly an epic. Although it had a lower box-office opening than Harry Potter, the film went on to gross more than $290 million in the US. Ian McKellen was perfectly cast as Gandalf, and there was some nice villainy from Christopher Lee.
Directed by The Hughes Brothers (Albert and Allen), From Hell was based on the grim graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell and grossed an impressive $70 million in the US: Johnny Depp gave a powerful performance as the opium-smoking psychic Inspector Abberline, investigating the Jack the Ripper killings in 1888 London.
Ridley Scott’s Hannibal was the much-anticipated sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), based on the novel by Thomas Harris (which had a different ending). Anthony Hopkins reprised his role as cannibal killer Dr Hannibal Lecter, Gary Oldman hammed it up as one of his mutilated victims, and Julianne Moore ably stepped into the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling.
Thir13en Ghosts, Steve Beck’s loose remake of the disappointing 1960 William Castle film, involved a strange house that was actually an occult machine powered by the trapped souls of twelve ghosts designed to open a gateway to Hell. Co-scripted by Adam Simon, Ernest Dickerson’s Bones brought rapper Snoop Dogg back from the dead as the eponymous 1970s ghetto pimp for a very brief Halloween run at the box office.
Although boasting a rave quote from Clive Barker and having Francis Ford Coppola amongst its executive producers, much of the criticism surrounding Jeepers Creepers centred on its controversial director, convicted paedophile Victor Salva. It opened in the US at No. 1 with $15.8 million, and went on to gross $33.6 million.
In Soul Survivors, a woman slipping in and out of a coma attempted to recall the events that led to her predicament. Writer/director Stephen Carpenter’s teen horror film suffered from being cut by its distributor from an ‘R’ rating to a ‘PG-13’ in America.
When it came to the summer blockbusters, Stephen Sommers’s The Mummy Returns was a fun action sequel to his 1999 original which enjoyed a record-breaking opening weekend before finally taking a worldwide total of more than $400 million.
Despite cameos from original stars Charlton Heston and Linda Harrison, Tim Burton’s disappointing and impersonal $100 million ‘re-imagining’ of Planet of the Apes took $69.5 million, during its first week in late July at the US box office. Only the first Jurassic Park had enjoyed a better opening weekend at the time. However, audiences quickly dropped off and the film ended up grossing just under $170 million. Meanwhile, extras from the film announced that they were suing the producers, claiming they were exposed to a cancer-causing substance during a dust storm scene.
Executive producer Steven Spielberg handed Jurassic Park III over to director Joe Johnston, and the result was a short but impressive ‘B’ movie. Filming reportedly began without a finished script, and it showed, despite the film earning $168 million.
Based on the successful interactive game, Lara Croft-Tomb Raider starred Angelina Jolie as the eponymous upper-crust adventurer attempting to prevent the Illuminati from tracking down the secret of an ancient device that could alter space and time.
Although Marlon Brando pulled out, reportedly suffering from pneumonia, after agreeing to appear in a cameo for $2 million, the dire Scary Movie 2 still went on to take nearly $70 million in the US.
Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge and Pam Grier found themselves battling centuries-old spooks in John Carpenter’s incompetent Ghosts of Mars, which opened and closed with a miserable $3.8 million. Woody Allen’s 1940s spoof The Curse of the Jade Scorpion did even worse, grossing just $2.5 million.
Denise Richards and David Boreanaz were among the suspects as a cupid-masked killer cut up the teen cast in the derivative slasher Valentine, and three teens travelling across the desert found themselves battling the undead in J. S. Cardone’s low-budget vampire thriller The Forsaken.
David Caruso was part of a crew sent into an abandoned mental hospital to clear asbestos who were soon affected by the building’s brooding atmosphere in Brad Anderson’s Session 9. Daniel Minahan’s low-budget Series 7: The Contenders involved a lethal TV game show where the last surviving contestant was the winner.
A good Jet Li battled an evil Jet Li from a different dimension in The One, Jake Gyllenhaal played a schizophrenic teenager who listened to a man-sized rabbit with a twisted face in Donnie Darko, and Steve Railsback portrayed the Wisconsin cannibal killer who inspired Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Chuck Parello’s Ed Gein.
Jeremy Irons and Bruce Payne hammed it up as villains in the juvenile sword-and-sorcery adventure Dungeons & Dragons, which also starred Thora Birch. The young American actress also turned up in The Hole, a low-budget British chiller about a group of boarding-school teens trapped in an old war bunker.
In Rob Green’s The Bunker, a group of German soldiers took refuge in an underground storage tunnel and wished they hadn’t. Urban Ghost Story starred Jason Connery as a journalist involved with a Glasgow family bothered by moving furniture and other spooky occurrences after the daughter’s near-death experience.
Chris Rock discovered he was dead before his time in Down to Earth, an unnecessary remake of Heaven Can Wait, while Martin Lawrence travelled back in time to visit Camelot in the equally pointless Black Knight.
Despite the acrimonious divorce of star Nicole Kidman and co-producer Tom Cruise, The Others, from young Spanish writer/director/composer Alejandro Amenabar, was a classic haunted house story set in 1945 that grossed an impressive $90.6 million. Meanwhile, Guillermo de Toro’s ghost story The Devil’s Backbone was set in a boy’s orphanage during the last days of the Spanish Civil War.
Sophie Marceau played the eponymous ghost in Belphegor: Phantom of the Louvre, based on the popular 1965 French TV mini-series. Julie Christie and Juliette Greco had cameos. Christophe Gans’s Brotherhood of the Wolf saw an 18th-century gardener and his Iroquois Indian blood brother sent to Gevaudan to track down a legendary beast. A box-office hit in its native France, it was apparently that country’s highest-grossing genre film ever.
Veteran Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale was a combination of gruesome game show and Lord of the Flies, while Alex de la Iglesias’s gory homage to Hitchcock, La Comunidad, was banned worldwide by George Lucas because one of the characters dressed like Darth Vader. Lucas also sued the producers of the porno movie Star Balk, claiming consumers could be confused into thinking that Lucasfilm sponsored the hardcore Star Wars spoof.