(The dining room and all other first-floor rooms, with the exception of the kitchen, were shot on a soundstage.) In 2012, John and Cynthia Abendshien, who owned the home when it was used as one of the film’s locations, sold the property for $1.585 million. Located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, the kitchen, main staircase, and ground-floor landing seen in the film were all shot in this five-bedroom residence. The Mccallister home from Home Alone has become a major tourist attraction. In 2011 more than 5 million people tuned in to watch it, making it the most watched show to air during the season. Showings of Home Alone have become a Christmas tradition in Poland, where the film has aired on national television since the early 1990s. While all of the main, original cast members reprised their roles for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (with Columbus again directing a script by Hughes), the success of the original led to a full-on franchise, complete with four sequels, three video games, two board games, a novelization, and other kid-friendly merchandise (including the Talkboy). “More than one executive said to me, ‘My picture did 40, but it would have done 50 if it hadn’t been Home Aloned,’” Goldman wrote. In his book Who Killed Hollywood ? And Other Essays, the late, great, Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman admitted that the unexpected success of Home Alone contributed a new phrase to the Hollywood lexicon: to be Home Aloned, meaning that other films suffered at the box office because of Home Alone’s long and successful run. Home Alone's unprecedented success led to its title becoming a verb. It held on to that title for quite some time-27 years, to be exact-until the Chinese blockbuster Never Say Die knocked it out of the top spot in 2017. It became the highest grossing film of 1990 and earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever domestically.
The movie maintained its number one spot for a full 12 weeks and remained in the top 10 until June of the following year. In its opening weekend, Home Alone topped the box office, making $17,081,997 in 1202 theaters. Home Alone was a Guinness World Record holder for more than 25 years.
I was casting a kid who truly had a troubled family life.” In 1995, Culkin’s parents, who were never married, engaged in a very public-and nasty- legal battle over his fortune. “We didn't know that much about the family at the beginning as we were shooting, we learned a little more. “I was much younger and I was really too naive to think about the family environment as well,” Columbus told The Guardian in 2013. But one lesson he learned from Home Alone is that when you agree to work with a kid actor, you’re also agreeing to work with that kid's family. Doubtfire, and two movies in the Harry Potter franchise. Since Home Alone, Columbus (who also wrote the scripts for Gremlins and The Goonies) has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s premier family-friendly moviemakers as the director of Home Alone 2, Mrs. Casting Kieran Culkin in Home Alone taught Chris Columbus a very important lesson.
In both 20, Culkin received Golden Globe nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for his work in HBO's Succession. Though the film marked Kieran’s acting debut, he has since gone on to build an impressive career for himself in movies like The Cider House Rules, Igby Goes Down, Scott Pilgrim vs. Macaulay's younger brother Kieran also landed a part in Home Alone, as Kevin’s bed-wetting cousin, Fuller. Macaulay Culkin wasn’t the only Culkin to appear in Home Alone. Which really was all for naught, as Culkin nailed the role. The role of kevin McCallister in Home Alone was written specifically for Macaulay Culkin.īut that didn't stop director Chris Columbus from auditioning more than 100 other rascally pre-teens for the part.
In Home Alone, Culkin has a similar confrontation with Daniel Stern, this time via a doggie door. Always game to play the precocious one, there’s a scene in which Culkin’s character interrogates a potential babysitter through a mail slot. The idea for Home Alone occurred to John Hughes during the making of Uncle Buck, which also starred Macaulay Culkin. Without Uncle Buck, there’d be no Home Alone. So settle in and enjoy, ya filthy animals. And while you may be able to recite its dialogue line for line, here are 25 things you might not know about the John Hughes-penned picture. Today, no holiday movie marathon is complete without a viewing of Home Alone, the movie that turned Macaulay Culkin into one of the biggest kid stars of all time. On November 16, 1990, what appeared to be a fun-filled little family yarn about a kid left to his own devices at Christmastime and forced to fend off a couple of bungling burglars became an instant classic.