Summer of '86: A Look at the Weekly Box-Office Champs
What do we learn about the summer of 1986 from the weekend box-office charts? Check out the infographic below, which shows each weekend’s No. 1 film.
In the period from mid-May to Labor Day covered above (a total of 17 weeks), only eight films hit No. 1; almost all had multiweek reigns, including four-week runs at the top for The Karate Kid, Part II and Aliens. Top Gun, Cobra, and The Fly all stayed at the top for two weeks. The only two movies that spent just a single week at the top were Short Circuit on the edge of the season, and Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy, Back to School. The Labor Day weekend champ, Stand by Me, stayed at No. 1 for two more weeks as summer turned into fall.
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How was the box office different in 1986? The first thing that jumps out compared with 2016, when we’ve gotten used to films opening anywhere from $50 million to $100 million—and even higher for a super-sized hit—is how small the winning figures look. The biggest opening of the summer was $15.7 million for Cobra, but that was padded by a fourth day of receipts added to its total on Memorial Day. Among the three-day weekends, The Karate Kid, Part II got the gold with $12.7 million. The only other film to debut above $10 million was Aliens, and just barely at that, with $10.1 million.
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Apart from inflation and the huge jump in the cost of a ticket over the past 30 years, big movies played on far fewer screens than they do now, which means fewer tickets to sell. For example, this weekend, Finding Dory will debut on 4,305 screens, while Central Intelligence will claim 3,508. When Top Gun debuted at No. 1 on the weekend ending May 18, 1986, it was on 1,028 screens, according to Box Office Mojo. On Cobra’s big Memorial Day weekend, it claimed a then-whopping 2,131 screens, the widest distribution for any hit film that summer.
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Maybe because there were fewer opportunities to see the movies, big hits lasted far longer in theaters than titles usually do now. Fast-forward past the summer to the weekend ending Sept. 14, and you find Top Gun; The Fly; The Karate Kid, Part II; and Aliens all still in the top 5 behind Stand by Me at No. 1. The following weekend, Top Gun reclaimed the No. 1 spot in its 19th week in theaters. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was still lingering in the top 10 in its 15th week of release. Compare that to 2016, when the oldest film in the top 10 last weekend — and just hanging on at No. 10 — was The Jungle Book in its ninth week.
By the end of the year, Top Gun would be the year’s No. 1 movie, with a total of $176.8 million. Also in the top 10 from summer ’86: The Karate Kid, Part II (No. 4, with $115.1 million); Back to School (No. 6; $91.3 million); Aliens (No. 7; $85.2 million); and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (No. 10; $70.1 million). By late September, only Top Gun’s Maverick would be a match for Paul Hogan’s Aussie in the big city Crocodile Dundee, which would linger at No. 1 for nine consecutive weeks and ultimately claim the No. 2 spot for the year with $174.8 million.
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Read more:
Summer of ’86: Some Quack Analysis of the Mega-Bomb ‘Howard the Duck’
Summer of ’86: An All-Star Year for the Razzies
Summer of ’86: How ‘Labyrinth’ Achieved Peak Practical Effects
Summer of ’86: ‘Aliens’ and the Adrenaline Jolt of a Lifetime
Summer of ’86: The Triumph of ‘About Last Night…’ and the Sounds of David Mamet
Summer of ’86: ‘Stand by Me’ Takes on Life, Death, and One Epic Barf-o-Rama
Summer of ’86: ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ Let John Hughes Graduate from Teen Movies With Honors
Summer of ’86: The Wild, Wacko Genre Mashup of ‘Big Trouble in Little China’
