December 7, 2023 – Theme Week Day 4

We’re in our Christmas Movies theme week, and today we’re talking about the 1990 classic Home Alone. It was directed by Chris Columbus and written and produced by John Hughes. Hughes came up with the idea for Home Alone while preparing to go on vacation. He was making a list of everything he didn’t want to forget and thought “Well, I’d better not forget my kids!” He wondered what his 10-year-old son would do if he got left behind, and wrote 8 pages of notes that eventually became the script for the movie.
Hughes initially suggested to Columbus that they cast Macaulay Culkin as Kevin, as he had worked with him on his movie Uncle Buck. However, wanting to do his directorial due diligence, Columbus auditioned 200 other actors for the part before meeting with Culkin and agreeing that he was the right choice. Macaulay wasn’t the only Culkin in the movie, though! It was the acting debut of his younger brother Kieran (of Succession fame now), who played Kevin’s cousin Fuller. Robert De Niro and Jon Lovitz both turned down the role of Harry, one of the Wet Bandits, before Joe Pesci accepted it. And Pesci did a bit of method acting on set, doing his best to avoid Macaulay Culkin so he’d be genuinely afraid of him when it came time to film.
Filming took place in Illinois between February and May 1990. It was shot in the same location as Hughes’ previous movies Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Plans, Trains, and Automobiles, and Uncle Buck. The exterior house scenes were filmed on location at a 3-story single-family home in Winnetka, Illinois. The house most recently sold for $1.585 million in 2012. Today it’s value is estimated to be over $2 million.
Home Alone premiered in Chicago on November 10, 1990 and was released to theaters on November 16 that year. It grossed $476.7 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing live-action comedy until it was surpassed by The Hangover Part II in 2011. It was the highest-grossing movie of 1990, after Ghost.
The film spawned a successful sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Culkin was paid $4.5 million for the sequel, compared to $110,000 for the original. There have actually been 6 sequels. The most recent was released on Disney+ in 2021, Home Sweet Home Alone. Learn more here.