Confusing Movie Marquee That I saw

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

It listed the following films:

Spider-Man 3
Pirates 3
Shrek 3
Fantastic 4

It just reminded me of the time years ago when Gwen saw the movie title “Passenger 57” and asked why it was called that, and I explained that there had been fifty-eight previous films about Passenger.

PAD

61 comments on “Confusing Movie Marquee That I saw”

  1. Back in the Seventies, I remember seeing a marque announcing a double feature: Earthquake and Towering Inferno.
    The marquee said, Shake and Bake.

  2. Oceans 13, even! It was great seeing you at Heroes Con this past weekend, Mr. David. Thank you for signing my Aquaman book!

  3. Hey, it is a close race but Fantastic is in the lead!

    –Nat (whose favorite movie listing came from the sign at the Eric Theaters in Pennsauken, NJ in his youth: ALIEN MEATBALLS ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ)

  4. Back in college we were knocking around the idea of doing a humor publication at the campus newspaper I worked at. I recall trying to write a piece called “Rock Concert Double Bills I’d Like To See.” I only got as far as “Madonna- Supertramp.”

  5. That’s funny. I mean, shouldn’t it have been “Fantastic 4 2”? I guess they know the audience is smart enough to know they’re talking about the sequel to the first film, yet, apparently feel that if they didn’t put the film number on the end of the other sequel movies, people would be walking in saying “Hey, I thought we were here to see the first Pirates/Spidey/Shrek movie!?”

  6. There was a movie back in 1992 called Malcolm X. I can’t seem to find IMDB listings for I – IX, can anybody help me?

  7. Or maybe whoever put the sign up thought it was the third sequel of the movie “Fantastic”….

  8. There’ve always been interesting stories to be told in marquee combos: “Erin Brokovich/Screwed/My Dog Skip,” for example. My favorite of this year has to be “Pirates/Knocked Up/Shrek,” though.

  10. Well, legend says that “Madness of King George” was planned to be called “Madness of King George III”, but the three I´s were dropped when shown prior to release because the public thought they had missed the first two.

    A story so good it deserves to be true

  11. “Spider-Man 3
    Pirates 3
    Shrek 3
    Fantastic 4″

    It looks to me like a grocery list or a bill.

    Maybe it should be the Fantastic 8?

    One joke goes that they chaged the name of the movie ‘the Madness of King George III’ to ‘the Madness of King George’ to avoid people asking what happened to the Madness of King George I and II.

  13. Very unusual, but I preferred the BROOMHILDA take on that.

    The witch is doing something when one of her weird acquaintances runs up, enthusiastically proclaiming that one of them newfangled ‘cineplexes’ has just opened in town.

    “Great! Finally, we’ll have some choice instead of just watching the same terrible movie over and over.”

    They get down to the cineplex building and there, on the marquee …

    RAMBO
    RAMBO 2
    RAMBO 3
    etc.

  14. I keep hoping that they start making prequels to OCEANS 11, in backwards order, detailing various smaller crews that Danny Ocean worked with, ending with OCEAN, an early solo job that goes disastrously, prompting him to declare that from now on, he works with an experienced crew.

  17. And apparently I’m not the only one to have seen that one… I’ll try to read for better comprehension in the future.

    PS: Has anyone seen “Leonard” Parts 1 thru 5? (For that matter, did anyone see Leonard Part 6 in the first place?)

  19. There was a comic panel a few weeks ago that had a double feature on a movie marquee that read,

    Adam’s Rib
    All About Eve

    I came up with an idea of a competing double feature,

    Planet of the Apes
    The Story of Mankind

    (TSoM) is one of my favorite bas movies of the 50’s that Featured Vincent Price as the Devil, and Ronald Coleman as The Spirit of Man.

    Bobb (i.I.)

  20. I keep hoping that they start making prequels to OCEANS 11, in backwards order, detailing various smaller crews that Danny Ocean worked with, ending with OCEAN, an early solo job that goes disastrously, prompting him to declare that from now on, he works with an experienced crew.
    ———-

    In the Entertainment Weekly article, Pitt and Clooney said that it should be like “And There Was None/Ten Little Indians” where the numbering keeps going backwards because someone gets killed off in each film.

    David

  21. I saw “Silver Surfer” this weekend and wondered out loud to a friend how many people might get confused between “Silver Surfer” and “Surf’s Up.” And I suppose you could throw “Ocean’s 13” into the watery theme as well.

    Maybe they could combine’em all and we’d have silver penguins ripping off a casino…

    :^)

  22. I’m still waiting for movies 9-1, where I guess the starring woman gets progressively less attractive…

    Or maybe the sequels “9 to 6” “9 to 7” and “9 to 8”.

  24. Favorite film proposed but never made:
    JAWS 3, PEOPLE 0
    I believe Universal was going to enlist National Lampoon and satirize sequelmania.

  26. Caught the FF movie over the weekend, was a/be mused to see that the BBFC logo screen showed the movie title as “4: The Rise of the Silver Surfer”

    Guess the British Board of Film Censors didn’t think it was so Fantastic….

    Cheers!

  28. It reminds ME of the time I heard a dude buy two tickets for himself and his girlfriend to the movie 12 Monkeys by saying “Two monkeys for 12 monkeys, please!” He thought he was hilarious, and the box office girl had a look on her face that said “Yeah, like I haven’t heard that one before.”

  29. Don’t forget the Pirates in that watery theme prevailing over the marquees, still. “Silver Surfer wipes out Penguins, Pirates, and tops Oceans.”

  30. Every once in a while our local theater plays all of the Rocky movies (including the newest, which didn’t do too well here). They do it in the summer when all of the tourists are here and it’s called “All the Goddam Rocky Balboa Ever Made +1”

  31. Here in Fort Wayne, we had one theater that just put the word “Menace” on its marquee, showing “Dennis the Menace” in the day and “Menace II Society” at night.

  32. “Well, legend says that “Madness of King George” was planned to be called “Madness of King George III”, but the three I´s were dropped when shown prior to release because the public thought they had missed the first two.”

    The real reason the name was changed was probably the obvious one. To the British, George III was just a monarch in the late 18th Century during the American Revolution and later during the French Revolution. But to Americans, his name–rightly or wrongly–has become synonymous with “tyrant”. Since the plot of King George revolved around his character being a sympathetic guy the audience can root for, they probably changed the name to get more Americans to buy tickets.

    For similar reasons, the plot of “Master and Commander” was changed for the movies. Ever wonder why a French warship was built in Boston? Because this wasn’t just the French Revolution—it was also the War of 1812 and in the original novel the “bad guys” are American.

  34. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger 57?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  35. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger 57?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  36. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger 57?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  37. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger 57?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  38. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger ?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  39. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger ?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  40. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger ?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  41. ummmm –
    y’know i love ya Pete, but….

    you mean you didn’t tell her there had been 56 previous movies about passenger ?

    58? :S

    Go to the board and show me the math on that.

  42. “…there had been fifty-eight previous films about Passenger.”

    That’s only if you count the direct to DVD prequel, Passenger: Disembarking Procedures, starring Larenz Tate, and Keith David as the crusty mentor of Passenger.

  43. About ten years ago, I remember one of the local theaters had this up on the marquee:

    HOWARD STERN’S PRIVATE PARTS
    SCREAM
    BOOTY CALL

  44. About ten years ago, I remember one of the local theaters had this up on the marquee:

    HOWARD STERN’S PRIVATE PARTS
    SCREAM
    BOOTY CALL

  46. One I remember seeing a few years ago was Fun with Ðìçk & Jane abbreviated to just Fun with Ðìçk on the marquee.

  47. Edward J. Cunningham typed:

    “Well, legend says that “Madness of King George” was planned to be called “Madness of King George III”, but the three I´s were dropped when shown prior to release because the public thought they had missed the first two.”

    This reminds me of a woman who was interviewed outside the showing of I forget the movie, but this is may be an urban legend.

    An Interviewer was talking to a African-American woman who was making a fuss at the theater box-office. She was upset that the paper review had stated that the movie was a ‘Black Comedy’, and she saw no Blacks in the film.

    Bobb

    (I always thought I had seen this incident on our local news, but maybe I heard this so many times I had become like on of those who even having seen Star Wars in 1977 are convinced it always said Episode Four in the credits.)

  48. “Well, legend says that “Madness of King George” was planned to be called “Madness of King George III”, but the three I´s were dropped when shown prior to release because the public thought they had missed the first two.”

    This reminds me of the story that the studio changed the name of Timothy Dalton’s last Bond movie from “License Revoked” to “License to Kill” because they didn’t think enough Americans knew what the word ‘revoked’ meant.

    Is it sad that I find this believable?

  49. Actually, I believe that was because the first reaction test audiences had to the title “License Revoked” was that it was referring to a driver’s license, giving the wrong connotation. In fact, that (very common) use of the phrase is exactly why you would expect your average american to know what it meant.

  50. It’s a few years ago now (2001 maybe?), but I saw one in London that said;

    WHAT WOMEN WANT
    CHOCOLAT

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