1990 in film


The year 1990 in film involved many significant events as shown below. Universal Pictures celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1990, despite its actual 75th anniversary taking place in 1987.

Highest-grossing films

The top 10 films released in 1990 by worldwide gross are as follows:
RankTitleDistributorWorldwide gross
1GhostParamount$505,702,588
2Home Alone20th Century Fox$476,684,675
3Pretty WomanBuena Vista$463,406,268
4Dances with WolvesOrion$424,208,848
5Total RecallTriStar / Carolco$261,317,921
6Back to the Future Part IIIUniversal$244,527,583
7Die Hard 220th Century Fox$240,031,094
8Presumed InnocentWarner Bros.$221,303,188
9Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesNew Line$202,084,756
10Kindergarten CopUniversal$201,957,688

Events

  • March 2 - The Hunt for Red October is released. It is the first film in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan franchise and is met with critical and blockbuster commercial success.
  • March 23 – Pretty Woman is released and grosses $463 million, making Julia Roberts a worldwide star.
  • March 30 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is released to massive box office success. At the time, it is the highest-grossing independent film in history.
  • May 25 – Universal Pictures unveils a new opening logo with music composed by James Horner, which debuts on Back to the Future Part III. It is the first change to the Universal opening logo in 27 years.
  • June 1 – CGI technique is expanded with motion capture for CGI characters, used in Total Recall.
  • June 15 – Following a massive media and marketing blitz, Dick Tracy is released. Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg expressed disappointment in a studio memo that noted that the film had cost about $100 million in total to produce, market and promote and with its disappointing performance claimed "We made demands on our time, talent and treasury that, upon reflection, may not have been worth it".
  • June 22 – The use of real-time computer graphics or "digital puppetry" to create a character in a motion picture is performed, in RoboCop 2.
  • July 4 – The first digitally-manipulated matte painting is used, in Die Hard 2.
  • July 13 - Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, is released and grosses $506 million, making it the third highest-grossing movie at the time.
  • November 9 – Kevin Costner's directorial debut, Dances with Wolves, is released. It later earns twelve Academy Award nominations and wins seven, including Best Picture and Best Director for Costner.
  • November 16
  • * Home Alone is released. It spends twelve consecutive weeks at number one on the United States box office, becoming both the highest-grossing film of the year and the highest-grossing comedy of all-time.
  • *The Rescuers Down Under is considered as the first fully digital film ever made.
  • December 24 – Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman marry.
  • Buchwald v. Paramount decided, a leading case on the financial rewards due to writers of film treatments.

    Awards

1990 films

By country/region