March 14, 2024 – Three Men and a Baby

Happy Throwback Thursday! Today’s throwback year is 1987. The highest grossing movie that year? Three Men and a Baby, directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring Ted Danson, Tom Selleck, and Steve Guttenberg. The film eventually grossed $167 million in the U.S. and Canada, surpassing Fatal Attraction to become the biggest box office hit of 1987. It was also Disney’s first live-action film to make more than $100 million at the domestic box office. It was their highest grossing film until Pretty Woman in 1990.
There was a popular urban legend associated with the film starting around August of 1990. Just over an hour into the film, there’s a scene where you can supposedly see a human figure looming behind the curtains in a window. According to the urban legend, it was the ghost of a boy who had died in the house where that scene was filmed. However, the figure is actually a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson’s character. It was created for a storyline that was eventually scrapped from the final version of the movie. It does show up later in the film too. And as far as a boy dying in the house where the movie was filmed…all indoor scenes were shot on a soundstage in Toronto. No houses were used for interior filming.
The success of the film launched a franchise, with the sequel Three Men and a Little Lady being released in 1990. In 2010, a third film, called Three Men and a Bride, was in development, but it was eventually abandoned in favor of a reboot. In December 2020, it was announced that the still-untitled reboot was in development and had been greenlit by Disney. It will star Zac Efron and will be a streaming exclusive movie for Disney+. The director has said the project will pay homage to the original movie and he intends for the original stars to appear, with a cameo at minimum. The original movie is currently streaming on Disney+. Learn more here.