The Decade of Money,
Mega-Spending and
Special Effects
Films of the 1990’s
Oscar Winners for Best Picture: 1990 –
1999
American Beauty, 1999
Shakespeare in Love
Titanic
The English Patient
Braveheart
Forrest Gump
Schindler's List
Unforgiven
The Silence of the Lambs
Dances With Wolves, 1990
$ Makers
1990
Home Alone
Ghost
1991
Terminator 2:
Judgment Day
1992
Aladdin
1993
Jurassic Park
Mrs. Doubtfire
1994
Forrest Gump
The Lion King
1995
Toy Story
Batman Forever
1996
Independence
Day & Twister
1997
Titanic
1998
Saving Private
Ryan &
Armageddon
1999
The Phantom
Menace & The
Sixth Sense
1991
 Pixar and Disney agreed to coproduce the first fully computergenerated feature, Toy Story,
released four years later.
 Disney's Beauty and the Beast was
the first animated film to be
nominated for Best Picture by the
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and
Sciences.
1992
 Americans
spent $12 billion to
buy or rent video tapes,
compared to just $4.9 billion on
box office ticket sales. 76 percent
of homes had VCRs.
1993

Ground-breaking, historically-significant film
Philadelphia from Jonathan Demme, starring
straight actors Tom Hanks (won his first Best
Actor Oscar) and Antonio Banderas as gay
lovers:
 first
major studio (big-budget) film to confront the
AIDS issue from a societal, medical, and political
point of view.
 Hanks' character, AIDS-afflicted lawyer who
contracted the disease and was forced to sue his
law firm over job discrimination - he was ably
defended by a black lawyer (Denzel Washington).
1994
became the first studio to
gross more than $1 billion at the
box office domestically in a single
year, mostly due to the release of
The Lion King (1994) - the
highest-grossing traditionally
animated feature film in the US at
the time.
 Disney

Best Picture winner Forrest Gump used
revolutionary digital photo tricks to insert the
film's main character into historical footage
with past Presidents (John F. Kennedy and LBJ)
and other situations. It would encourage the
trend of physically including actors with old
existing footage, making it appear like the
characters were interacting with each other.
Shortly afterwards, this technique - which
expanded to advertising commercials controversially presented dead stars hawking
products (i.e., James Cagney and Louis
Armstrong appeared in Diet Coke ads, and John
Wayne was in a Coors Light commercial).
A
Newcomer Studio:
DreamWorks
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
American Beauty (1999)
Gladiator (2000)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
 Toy
1995
Story was the first totally-digital (or
computer-generated) feature-length
animated film. Noted as being Pixar's first
feature to be released in theaters. The
visuals were entirely generated from
computers, creating a wonderfully-realistic
3-D world with lighting, shading, and
textures, that included real toys in
supporting roles (Etch-A-Sketch, Slinky
Dog, the plastic toy soldiers, Mr. Potato
Head, etc.).
 Warner
Bros. created the WB
Network, a TV broadcast outlet
for its TV properties. (Some of the
new network's earliest shows
were Buffy The Vampire Slayer,
7th Heaven, and Dawson's Creek
-- none of which were produced
by Warners.)
 Genre
1996
of teen slasher films was revitalized
by Scream from famed horror director
Wes Craven. The half-parody and halftribute film (with nods to Hitchcock's
films, Friday the 13th (1980) and
Halloween (1978), among others) gave
rise to two sequels (1997 and 2000) and
other copycat films (i.e., I Know What You
Did Last Summer (1997) and The Faculty
(1999)), including the silly Scary Movie
 In
the US,
Twister was
rated PG-13 for
"intense
depiction of
very bad
weather."
 Twister
was also
the first film
released on DVD.
1997
 James Cameron's Titanic, the most
expensive film of all time at the time
of its release, also soon became the
highest grossing film in Hollywood
history (at $600.8 million domestic
gross box-office receipts, and $1.8
billion total worldwide). Delays during
production & budget of $200 million
threatened to 'sink' the film, but didn't
affect its overall success.
 Repeated
theatrical viewings by
young teens (enthralled by the
romance between Leonardo DiCaprio
and Kate Winslet) were partly
responsible for the film's high returns.
 The blockbuster film had a recordtying fourteen nominations and won a
record-tying eleven Academy Awards,
including those for Best Picture and
Best Director.
 And
the film was backed or coproduced by two studios in order to
foot the bill: Fox and Paramount.
 When
adjusted for inflation, however,
Cleopatra (1963) had the highest
budget of any film, and Gone with the
Wind (1939) remained the highest
grossing.
1998
 Steven Spielberg's war epic of D-Day,
Saving Private Ryan, gave its director
his second Best Director Oscar. Film
noted for its half-hour, spectacularlybloody, realistically-filmed opening of
the Omaha Beach landing. It also
inspired dialogue between
generations regarding the events of
World War II.
1999
 First of three prequels (released from
1999-2005), George Lucas' highlyanticipated Star Wars: Episode I -The
Phantom Menace, opened and
became the top grossing film of its
year.
 $28.5 million-first day of showing,
and passed the $100 million level in
a record five days. It eventually
First
film w/ a Dolby Digital
Surround EX soundtrack. This film
undoubtedly contained more
computer animation and special
effects than any previous film - over
90%.
Featured a completely CGIgenerated (all digital), fullyarticulated main humanoid
character named Jar Jar Binks
Groundbreaking Internet
Film-Marketing:
Case Study - The Blair
Witch Project
 Most
financially successful film.
Made for $30,000, it grosses over
$140 million. One of the keys to
its success is advertising over the
internet