Thanks for coming back a third time as we wrap up this year’s series! In Part 1, I covered the movies we know and love that are turning 40 in 2026, and in Part 2, we jumped ahead to the films turning 35. Today, we’re heading back to 1996 to celebrate the movies that have turned (or will turn) 30!
And 1996 was one heck of a year. One of my favorites, honestly.
The "Macarena" spent 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics, the Nintendo 64 arrived in North America in September, and Bill Clinton won a second term in November. By the holidays, adults were practically wrestling each other in shopping malls for Tickle Me Elmo dolls.
Growing up in New York as a Mets fan, I’ll point out that Todd Hundley broke the major-league record for home runs by a catcher that season, but I’ll leave out the rest of the losing 1996 season. You may also remember 1996 as the year 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier's interference from the bleachers helped alter the Orioles-Yankees series and eventually sent the Yanks to the World Series and the start of their dynasty.
At the movies, it was a memorable year of exploding landmarks, flying cows, a very polite police chief in Minnesota, and a phone call you really didn’t want to answer that just may have been coming from inside the house.
Before we get to the main list, a few other 1996 favorites deserve a quick mention.
The Nutty Professor (June 28) gave Eddie Murphy a major comeback, with Murphy playing Sherman Klump, his alter ego Buddy Love, and nearly the entire Klump family at the dinner table. Rick Baker’s makeup won the Oscar, the film grossed $128.9 million domestically and $274 million worldwide, and it returned to theaters for its 30th anniversary in September.
Danny DeVito’s Matilda (August 2) starred Mara Wilson as the book-loving girl with telekinetic powers, with DeVito and Rhea Perlman as her awful parents and Pam Ferris as the terrifying Miss Trunchbull. It made just $33.5 million at the U.S. box office but became a home video favorite, and it’s dedicated to Wilson’s mother, Suzie, who passed away four months before it opened. (DeVito had a very busy 1996, as you’ll see below.)
Finally, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (November 1) dropped Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes into a modern-day Verona Beach, with guns, gangs, and Shakespeare’s original dialogue. It opened at number one with $11.1 million and grossed $147.6 million worldwide on a $14.5 million budget. Fun fact: Natalie Portman was originally cast as Juliet, but at 14, they thought she looked too young. She still ended up in another movie on this list, though. For the 30th anniversary, it returned to U.K. theaters in March, and a live-to-film concert tour is running through 2027.
Let's wrap up the week here with a (mostly) complete list of movies turning 30 in 2026, in order of their U.S. release date. As always, this isn’t a complete list, so if I missed any hit movies you think should make the cut, please let me know in the comments.
And now... let’s head back 30 years to 1996!
Happy Gilmore
February 16, 1996
We tee off with a classic sports comedy directed by Dennis Dugan for Universal Pictures and written by Adam Sandler and his old college roommate Tim Herlihy, their second film together after Billy Madison. Sandler stars as Happy Gilmore, a hot-headed hockey player who can’t skate but has a slapshot that can drive a golf ball 400 yards. When his grandmother (Frances Bay) learns she owes the IRS $270,000 in back taxes, Happy joins the pro tour to save her house. The rest of the cast includes Christopher McDonald as the smug Shooter McGavin, Julie Bowen as tour PR director Virginia Venit, Carl Weathers as one-handed mentor Chubbs Peterson, and an uncredited Ben Stiller as Hal, the nursing home orderly from your nightmares.
Shot in and around Vancouver in the summer of 1995 on a $12 million budget, the movie loosely drew on Sandler’s childhood friend Kyle McDonough, a hockey player who could always outdrive him on the golf course. Chubbs’s missing hand is an in-joke about Weathers losing his arm in Predator. Kevin Costner passed on Shooter for Tin Cup. And yes, that’s really The Price Is Right’s Bob Barker throwing punches at the pro-am, a fight that won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.
Happy Gilmore opened at number two, behind Broken Arrow, with $8.5 million, and earned $38.8 million domestically. Critics weren’t laughing. Roger Ebert gave it 1.5 stars, and it holds a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes. Golfers, on the other hand, adopted it as their own, and pros like Pádraig Harrington still break out the running "Happy Gilmore swing."
We lost Bob Barker in 2023 and Carl Weathers in 2024, but in July 2025, Sandler finally brought the gang back for Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix, with McDonald, Bowen, and Stiller all returning. It drew 46.7 million views in its first three days, and the original even went back to theaters that April.
Fargo
March 8, 1996
Joel and Ethan Coen wrote, directed, produced, and edited this dark comedy crime film, which Gramercy Pictures released. Frances McDormand stars as Marge Gunderson, the very pregnant (and very polite) police chief of Brainerd, Minnesota, who investigates a string of roadside murders. William H. Macy plays Jerry Lundegaard, a desperate Minneapolis car salesman who hires two criminals to kidnap his own wife so he can collect a ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. The rest of the cast includes Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare as the mismatched kidnappers Carl and Gaear, Harve Presnell as father-in-law Wade, and John Carroll Lynch as Marge’s husband, Norm.
Shot in the winter of 1995 on a $7 million budget, mostly around Minneapolis-St. Paul and Pembina County, North Dakota, the production ran into a problem you wouldn’t expect in Minnesota: not enough snow. The crew had to chase it north. The movie also opens by telling you it’s a true story, which fooled millions.
It isn’t. The Coens said they built a made-up story around a real criminal case, and Snopes later called the claim a "prank."
Fargo competed at the Cannes Film Festival that May, where Joel Coen won Best Director, and it earned $24.6 million domestically. It holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it four stars, calling it "one of the best films I’ve ever seen." Siskel and Ebert both named it the best film of 1996. It earned seven Oscar nominations and won two: Best Actress for McDormand and Best Original Screenplay for the Coens.
Fargo joined the National Film Registry in 2006, and its world of "Minnesota nice" lives on in the FX anthology series that premiered in 2014. In April, the Fargo Theatre in Fargo, North Dakota, kicked off its Centennial Film Series with a 30th anniversary screening and a Q&A with Stormare himself.
I'd argue the FX series (some seasons) was better than the movie. Oh yah, you betcha!
The Birdcage
March 8, 1996
Opening the same day as Fargo, this comedy was produced and directed by Mike Nichols for MGM/UA and written by his old comedy partner Elaine May, marking their first screen collaboration. A remake of the 1978 French-Italian film La Cage aux Folles, it stars Robin Williams as Armand Goldman, the owner of a South Beach drag club, and Nathan Lane as his partner Albert, the club’s star attraction. When Armand’s son Val (Dan Futterman) gets engaged to Barbara (Calista Flockhart), the daughter of an ultraconservative senator, the household has to play it straight for one very long dinner. The rest of the cast includes Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest as Senator and Mrs. Keeley, Hank Azaria as the scene-stealing housekeeper Agador, and Christine Baranski as Val’s mother, Katharine.
Nichols had been fired from the 1983 Broadway version of La Cage, and after visiting a drag show in South Beach, he moved his film’s setting from New Orleans to Miami Beach. Williams didn’t want to play Albert so soon after Mrs. Doubtfire, which opened the door for Lane. Nichols let the two improvise over weeks of rehearsals, and it shows through the off-the-cuff hilarity throughout the movie.
The reported budget was $31 million. The Birdcage opened at number one and stayed there for four straight weekends, earning $124.1 million domestically and $185.3 million worldwide. It holds an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three stars, praising "a wicked screenplay by Elaine May." The cast won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast, and the film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction. It was also one of the few major studio films of its time centered on a gay couple.
We lost Robin Williams in 2014 and Gene Hackman in 2025. In June, Fathom brought The Birdcage back to theaters for Pride Month, with an introduction by Leonard Maltin.
Twister
May 10, 1996
This disaster film was directed by Jan de Bont, written by Michael Crichton and his then-wife Anne-Marie Martin, and was produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. Helen Hunt stars as Jo Harding, a meteorologist obsessed with tornadoes after one killed her father when she was a girl, and Bill Paxton plays her estranged husband, Bill, a former storm chaser turned TV weatherman who shows up with divorce papers and his new fiancée (Jami Gertz). The rest of the cast includes Cary Elwes as corporate-funded rival Jonas Miller, Lois Smith as Aunt Meg, Alan Ruck, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the wild-man chaser Dusty.
Shot all over Oklahoma, including the real town of Wakita, where the production demolished part of the old town for the aftermath scenes, the production was famously rough. Bright electronic lamps temporarily blinded Hunt and Paxton, and after De Bont knocked a camera assistant into a ditch, the camera crew walked off the set.
De Bont said the film cost close to $70 million, but reshoots reportedly pushed it to around $90 million (Box Office Mojo lists $92 million). Industrial Light & Magic created the digital tornadoes, whose roar included lion roars and camel moans.
Twister opened with more than $41 million, the biggest non-holiday May weekend ever at the time, and grossed $241.7 million domestically and about $494.6 million worldwide, second only to Independence Day for the year. It holds a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it two and a half stars, writing that "as spectacle, however, Twister is impressive." It earned two Oscar nominations and, in 1997, became one of the first feature films released on DVD in the U.S.
We lost Hoffman in 2014 and Paxton in 2017, but the standalone sequel Twisters earned $372.3 million worldwide in 2024. This May, nearly 3,000 fans packed Wakita for the Twister the Movie Museum’s 30th anniversary celebration.
Mission: Impossible
May 22, 1996
Brian De Palma directed this spy thriller for Paramount Pictures, and Tom Cruise produced and starred in it. Based on the 1960s TV series, it stars Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, who is framed for the deaths of his team after a mission goes wrong in Prague and has to steal the CIA’s NOC list to flush out the real mole. Jon Voight plays team leader Jim Phelps, and the rest of the cast includes Emmanuelle Béart as Jim’s wife Claire, Henry Czerny as IMF director Kittridge, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames as hacker Luther Stickell, and Vanessa Redgrave.
Shot in Prague, London, and at Pinewood Studios on a budget Box Office Mojo lists at $80 million, the film was completed on time and under budget. Cruise did most of his own stunts, including the exploding restaurant fish tanks (16 tons of water in all), which De Palma asked him to do after a stuntman’s take didn’t look convincing. Since then, he's become famous for completing most of his extreme stunts himself.
Mission: Impossible opened in a then-record 3,012 theaters, the first film to play in more than 3,000, and its $45.4 million opening weekend broke the May record Twister had set just two weeks earlier. It went on to earn $181 million domestically and $457.7 million worldwide, third for the year. It holds a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three stars, writing, "This is a movie that exists in the instant, and we must exist in the instant to enjoy it." Peter Graves, the original Jim Phelps, didn't like what it did to his character.
Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. of U2 turned Lalo Schifrin’s classic theme into an international top-ten hit. The eighth film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, arrived in May 2025 and grossed $598.8 million worldwide. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
The Rock
June 7, 1996
This action thriller was directed by Michael Bay, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Disney’s Hollywood Pictures. Ed Harris plays Brigadier General Francis Hummel, a disillusioned Marine who seizes Alcatraz with a group of rogue Force Recon Marines, takes a tour group hostage, and threatens to launch rockets full of VX gas at San Francisco. The government’s only hope is FBI chemical weapons specialist Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) and John Mason (Sean Connery), a former British SAS captain and the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz. Michael Biehn, David Morse, and John Spencer co-star.
Most of the movie was shot on location at Alcatraz, which couldn’t be closed to tourists, so the crew worked around tour groups. The scene where FBI Director Womack is thrown off a balcony was filmed at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, prompting calls from people who saw a man dangling. Quentin Tarantino and Aaron Sorkin were uncredited script doctors. Made on a $75 million budget, the film is dedicated to Simpson, who died five months before it opened.
The Rock knocked Mission: Impossible out of first place with a $25 million opening, Disney’s biggest live-action opening at the time, and earned $134.1 million domestically and $335.1 million worldwide. It holds a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three and a half stars, calling it "a first-rate, slam-bang action thriller with a lot of style and no little humor." It earned an Oscar nomination for Best Sound, and the Criterion Collection even released it on DVD.
Its strangest legacy? According to the U.K.’s Chilcot Inquiry, British intelligence was misled about Iraq’s chemical weapons by a source whose reports were apparently based on The Rock. We lost Connery in 2020, and Disney’s 30th anniversary 4K edition is expected before the end of the year.
The Cable Guy
June 14, 1996
This dark comedy was directed by Ben Stiller (which I never knew myself) and released by Columbia Pictures. Jim Carrey stars as Chip Douglas, a lonely cable installer raised by television who latches on to customer Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) after Steven bribes him for free movie channels. What starts as an awkward friendship turns into full-on stalking. The rest of the cast includes Leslie Mann as Steven’s girlfriend Robin, Jack Black as his buddy Rick, George Segal and Diane Baker as his parents, and Owen Wilson.
Carrey was paid a then-record $20 million, and first-time screenwriter Lou Holtz Jr., who came up with the idea while working as a prosecutor in Los Angeles, sold his script for $750,000. Producer Judd Apatow, who had worked on The Ben Stiller Show, suggested Stiller direct, and together with Carrey, they turned what Apatow described as "a What About Bob? annoying friend movie" into something much darker.
Stiller, an admitted Trekkie, staged the Medieval Times fight as an homage to the Star Trek episode "Amok Time," right down to the music.
The budget was $47 million. The Cable Guy opened at number one with $19.8 million, knocking The Rock off the top, and grossed $60.2 million domestically and $102.8 million worldwide, which Carrey considered a disappointment at the time. It holds a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it two stars, writing, "We want to like Jim Carrey. A movie that makes us dislike him is a strategic mistake."
Time has been kind to it. It’s a cult classic now; Carrey calls it one of his favorite films, and it helped open the door to darker roles like The Truman Show. For the 30th anniversary, Sony is releasing it on 4K for the first time this fall, with a new conversation between Stiller and Broderick recorded at the 2026 Tribeca Festival.
Independence Day
July 3, 1996
Roland Emmerich directed the year's biggest movie, written by Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin and released by 20th Century Fox. When 15-mile-wide alien ships park over the world’s biggest cities, a ragtag group of survivors comes together in the Nevada desert to fight back on the Fourth of July. Will Smith stars as Marine pilot Captain Steven Hiller, Jeff Goldblum as cable technician David Levinson, who decodes the aliens’ countdown, and Bill Pullman as President Thomas Whitmore. The rest of the cast includes Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid as crop duster Russell Casse, Robert Loggia, Vivica A. Fox, and Brent Spiner as Area 51 scientist Dr. Okun (more on Spiner later).
Emmerich came up with the idea while promoting Stargate, when a reporter asked whether he believed in aliens. The model shop built more than twice as many miniatures as any film before it. Box Office Mojo lists the budget at $75 million. Ethan Hawke turned down Hiller because he thought the script was terrible. The movie wouldn't be the same had he agreed to the role.
Fox moved the release up a day, and preview screenings on July 2 (the same day the story begins) brought in a record $11.1 million. It went on to gross $306.2 million domestically and $817.4 million worldwide, second only to Jurassic Park at the time. It holds a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it two and a half stars, wondering why the aliens’ countdown used hours and minutes. It won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Empire readers later voted President Whitmore’s big speech the "Cheesiest Movie Moment of All Time" in 2003 (which, if you ask me, is a big part of the fun).
Independence Day: Resurgence followed 20 years later in 2016, without Smith, and flopped. For the 30th anniversary, theaters nationwide brought the original back on July 3, and Cineworld screened it across the U.K. in September.
That Thing You Do!
October 4, 1996
Tom Hanks passed on Jerry Maguire (more on that below) to make his feature-writing and directing debut with this comedy-drama for 20th Century Fox. Set in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1964, it follows the Oneders, a local band that rides one catchy song to the top of the charts before it all falls apart. Tom Everett Scott stars as drummer Guy Patterson, with Johnathon Schaech as songwriter Jimmy, Steve Zahn as guitarist Lenny, and Ethan Embry as the bass player, who is credited only as "T.B. Player." Liv Tyler plays Jimmy’s girlfriend Faye, Hanks plays Play-Tone Records man Mr. White, and Charlize Theron and Hanks’s wife, Rita Wilson, also appear.
Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne wrote the title song, and Hanks wrote some of the other period songs himself, including the opening-credits tune "Lovin’ You Lots and Lots" by the fictional Norm Wooster Singers. The four leads took weeks of lessons and practiced together until extras on set thought they were really playing.
The budget was reported at $26 million, and That Thing You Do! earned $25.9 million domestically and $34.6 million worldwide, a box office disappointment. Critics loved it, though. It holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three stars, writing that "it remembers with great warmth a time and a place." In the movie, the fictional band's single climbs to number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. In real life, it peaked at number 41 and earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song.
Since then, the movie has grown into a cult classic. It turned 30 on October 4, and Gold Derby marked the occasion with an oral history featuring the cast and crew. Good luck getting that song out of your head now.
Space Jam
November 15, 1996
Turning 30 on November 15, this live-action and animated sports comedy was directed by Joe Pytka for Warner Bros. Michael Jordan plays himself, pulled into Looney Tune Land by Bugs Bunny to help the Tune Squad win a basketball game against the Monstars, alien invaders who have stolen the talents of NBA stars Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Muggsy Bogues, Larry Johnson, and Shawn Bradley. Wayne Knight (Newman himself, who we saw in JFK back in Part 2) plays Jordan’s assistant Stan, Theresa Randle plays Juanita Jordan, Billy West voices Bugs and Elmer Fudd, and Danny DeVito voices the villainous Mr. Swackhammer. Bill Murray and Larry Bird show up as themselves.
The idea grew out of Nike’s "Hare Jordan" Super Bowl ads, which paired Jordan with Bugs. Jordan filmed in the summer of 1995, after his return to the NBA, and Warner built him the "Jordan Dome," an inflatable gym on the studio lot where he played pickup games with NBA stars after a day of shooting. It must have worked, since the Bulls went 72-10 that season. More than 700 people at 18 studios worked on the animation; Bill Murray signed on only after Jordan personally asked him, and the budget was reported at $80 million.
Space Jam opened at number one with $27.5 million and earned $90.4 million domestically and about $250 million worldwide by The Numbers’ count (Box Office Mojo lists about $230 million), making it the highest-grossing basketball movie at the time. Ebert gave it three and a half stars, but it holds just a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. The soundtrack went six-times platinum, and the original spacejam.com website stayed online, mostly untouched, for 25 years.
LeBron James took over the franchise in Space Jam: A New Legacy in 2021. For the 30th anniversary, AMC brought the original back to its Dolby Cinema screens for one night on May 20, complete with a basketball-shaped popcorn bucket.
Jingle All the Way
November 22, 1996
Also turning 30 on November 22, this Christmas comedy was directed by Brian Levant, produced by Chris Columbus, and released by 20th Century Fox. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Howard Langston, a workaholic Minneapolis mattress salesman who forgets to buy his son Jamie (Jake Lloyd, the future Anakin Skywalker) the year’s hottest toy, Turbo Man, and has to track one down on Christmas Eve. Sinbad plays his rival, stressed-out mailman Myron Larabee, and the rest of the cast includes Phil Hartman as Howard’s smarmy neighbor Ted, Rita Wilson (who we just saw in That Thing You Do!) as his wife Liz, and Robert Conrad as Officer Hummell.
The story drew on real toy crazes like Cabbage Patch Kids and Power Rangers, and Columbus chose Sinbad over Joe Pesci for Myron. Schwarzenegger became available when Fox’s Planet of the Apes remake stalled, and he was reportedly paid $20 million. Filming took place around the Twin Cities, including the Mall of America and Mickey’s Diner in St. Paul, and at the time, it was the largest film production ever in Minnesota. Reports put the budget anywhere from $60 million to $75 million.
Talk about timing. That same holiday season, real parents were fighting over Tickle Me Elmo dolls. The film opened in fourth place with $12.1 million and grossed $60.6 million domestically and $129.8 million worldwide. Critics, however, were not feeling the holiday spirit. It holds just a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, though Ebert gave it two and a half stars. It also led to a lawsuit when, in 2001, Fox was ordered to pay $19 million to a publisher who claimed a teacher’s script had stolen the idea, but the verdict was overturned three years later.
Sadly, we lost Hartman in 1998, making this the last film released in his lifetime, and Robert Conrad passed in 2020. A sequel in name only with Larry the Cable Guy followed in 2014.
This is one of my family's go-to Christmas movies.
Star Trek: First Contact
November 22, 1996
Opening the same day as Jingle All the Way (and beating it), the eighth Star Trek film marked Jonathan Frakes's (Commander Riker himself) feature-film directing debut and the first Trek movie without any of the original series cast. Patrick Stewart returns as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who chases the Borg back in time to 2063, where they plan to stop Zefram Cochrane’s first warp flight and humanity’s first contact with alien life. The cast includes Brent Spiner as Data (back from his Independence Day side gig), LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, James Cromwell as Cochrane, Alfre Woodard as his assistant Lily, and Alice Krige as the Borg Queen.
Writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore combined their wish to use the Borg with producer Rick Berman’s time-travel idea, and an early draft was set in Renaissance Italy. Ridley Scott and John McTiernan reportedly turned down the director’s chair before Frakes got the job. The film was budgeted at $45 million, and Fox dropped the planned title, Resurrection, when it announced Alien Resurrection. The real Titan Missile Museum near Tucson, Arizona, stood in for Cochrane’s launch silo. For the first time in the series, the soundtrack included licensed songs: Roy Orbison’s "Ooby Dooby" and Steppenwolf’s "Magic Carpet Ride."
First Contact opened at number one with $30.7 million, knocking Space Jam to second place, and earned $92 million domestically and $146 million worldwide. It holds a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three and a half stars, calling it "one of the best of the eight Star Trek films." It also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.
Star Trek: Insurrection followed in 1998, and Picard’s "The line must be drawn here!" speech is still a fan favorite. For the 30th anniversary, Paramount released a new 4K SteelBook in September. Resistance is futile!
Mars Attacks!
December 13, 1996
Turning 30 in December, this sci-fi black comedy was directed by Tim Burton for Warner Bros. and based on (of all things) the Topps trading card series. When big-brained Martians arrive on Earth announcing that they "come in peace," they promptly start vaporizing everyone in sight. Jack Nicholson plays two roles, President James Dale and Las Vegas developer Art Land, and the stacked cast includes Glenn Close as the First Lady, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito (busy year!), Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Jack Black, and Natalie Portman as the First Daughter (see, I told you she’d turn up). Oh, and Tom Jones as himself.
Burton saw it as a tribute to Ed Wood and 1950s B-movies. He originally wanted stop-motion Martians in the style of Ray Harryhausen, but as costs climbed, ILM made a computer-animated test reel, and Burton switched to CGI. Warner Bros. wanted it made for no more than $60 million, and it landed at $80 million, plus another $20 million for marketing. Fun connection: Roger L. Jackson, the future voice of Ghostface, voiced the Martians’ translator machine, and it helped him land his audition for Scream (more on that one below).
Mars Attacks! opened second behind Jerry Maguire with $9.4 million and earned $37.8 million domestically, though it did better in Europe, finishing with about $101.4 million worldwide. Plenty of critics compared it to Independence Day. It holds a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it two stars, writing that "the makers felt superior to the material." It was also Sylvia Sidney’s final film, and spoiler alert: the Martians’ weakness turns out to be Slim Whitman’s "Indian Love Call."
We lost Jim Brown in 2023 and Joe Don Baker, who played Richie’s dad, in 2025. It’s a full-blown cult classic now, and in August, Warner Bros. released a remastered 30th-anniversary 4K edition with new retrospective featurettes. Ack! Ack!
Jerry Maguire
December 13, 1996
Turning 30 in December, this sports romantic comedy-drama was written and directed by Cameron Crowe, produced with James L. Brooks’s Gracie Films, and released by TriStar Pictures. Tom Cruise (his second film on this list) stars as Jerry Maguire, a slick sports agent who has a crisis of conscience, gets fired, and is left with one client, Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and one loyal employee, single mom Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger). The rest of the cast includes Jonathan Lipnicki as Dorothy’s son Ray, Kelly Preston, Jerry O’Connell, Jay Mohr, Bonnie Hunt, and Regina King as Rod’s wife Marcee.
Crowe based the story partly on real agent Leigh Steinberg, who served as a technical consultant, and he wrote the part for Tom Hanks. By the time the script was ready, though, Hanks was more interested in directing That Thing You Do! Janet Jackson was initially cast as Marcee before the producers gave the role to King, and they considered a long list of actresses for Dorothy, including Winona Ryder, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Marisa Tomei. The budget was $50 million.
Jerry Maguire opened at number one with $17.1 million, beating Mars Attacks!, and went on to earn $154.1 million domestically and $273.7 million worldwide. It holds an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three stars, writing that it "starts out looking cynical and quickly becomes a heartwarmer." It earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Cruise, and Gooding won Best Supporting Actor. Cruise also won the Golden Globe.
"Show me the money!" and "You had me at ’hello’" both made AFI’s list of the 100 greatest movie quotes, at numbers 25 and 52. We lost Kelly Preston in 2020, and this April, TriStar brought the film back to theaters for three days to celebrate the 30th anniversary.
Scream
December 20, 1996
We close out the series with a slasher that turns 30 just before Christmas. Directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson for Miramax’s Dimension Films, Scream stars Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, a high school student in Woodsboro, California, whose friends start getting picked off by a masked killer as the anniversary of her mother’s murder approaches. The rest of the cast includes Courteney Cox as tabloid reporter Gale Weathers, David Arquette as Deputy Dewey, Skeet Ulrich as Sidney’s boyfriend Billy, Matthew Lillard as Stu, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy as horror buff Randy, and Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker, plus Henry Winkler as Principal Himbry and Craven himself as Fred the janitor.
Williamson wrote the script, originally titled Scary Movie (which became the name of the series of spoof movies), in three days after watching a documentary about the Gainesville Ripper, and it sparked a bidding war. Barrymore was first offered Sidney but asked to play Casey instead, and killing off the biggest star in the opening scene told audiences that anyone could die. Filmed in Sonoma County, California, on a reported $14 to $15 million budget, it got its iconic mask from a Halloween costume made by the novelty company Fun World.
Nobody expected a slasher to do much business at Christmas, and it debuted in fourth place with $6.4 million. But word of mouth was so strong that its gross went up in its second and third weekends. It earned $103 million domestically and $173 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing slasher film ever until Halloween (2018). It holds a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Ebert gave it three stars.
Williamson took the director’s chair for Scream 7 this February, with Campbell back as Sidney, and it became the highest-grossing film in the series with $214 million worldwide. Scream 8 is already in the works. For the 30th, Paramount is bringing the original back to select theaters on October 30, and a 30th anniversary 4K collector’s set with a replica cordless phone arrives December 15. What’s your favorite scary movie?
And there you have it, the movies turning 30 in 2026, and the end of this year’s series! From flying cows and Alcatraz to Turbo Man, the Borg Queen, and a killer on the other end of the line, 1996 had a little bit of everything at the movies.
Thanks for sticking with me through all three parts, from Top Gun and Ferris Bueller in 1986, to T2 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, all the way to Independence Day and Scream. Which of these did you see in the theater, and which ones wore out your VHS tape? And if I missed one of your favorites, let me know in the comments below!
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