The teen pic parade

1999 Releases...

September 1, 1999

1999 Releases

September 10: Indie film The Suburbans, riding on teens’ love affair with Jennifer Love Hewitt, has been picked up by TriStar Pictures. The story follows the reunion tour of an early 1980’s band, and was directed by Donal Lardner Ward, co-writer of teen sleeper My Life’s in Turnaround.

October 1: Twentieth Century Fox’s Melissa Joan Hart vehicle Drive Me Crazy takes place in-you guessed it-high school, where the Sabrina the Teenage Witch star and a classmate played by Adrian Grenier (Woody Allen’s Celebrity) pretend to be romantically involved to win back their real love interests.

October 8: In New Line’s eerie drama Lost Souls, Winona Ryder plays a young woman who becomes aware of a conspiracy to enable the devil to walk the earth in human form.

October 15: New Line’s Body Shots, the latest in a spate of teen comedies from the studio that hatched Austin Powers, follows eight 20-somethings on a wild ride through the notorious L.A. nightlife, finding romantic pratfalls along the way.

November 19: Although Paramount’s scary ghost story Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (featuring teen star Christina Ricci) is targeted at teens and adults, the movie’s police constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) will be captured in a lifelike Halloween toy line from Todd McFarlane Toys. Special effects will bring the Headless Horseman and other creepy story elements to computer-generated life.

Q4: From its costumed killer terrorizing the popular kids at Bulimia Falls High School, to its setting on Friday the 13th and Halloween, Rhino Film’s I Know What You Screamed Last Summer leaves no teen horror stone unspoofed. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Tom Arnold co-star.

December: Scream 3, starring indie actress Parker Posey, is Dimension Films’ third (and supposedly last) installment in the teen chiller franchise. Directed by Wes Craven, the movie picks up with the Scream crew in their post-college years, still tormented by the black-robed spectre.

2000 Releases

Q1: Warner Bros.’ Gossip, starring James Marsden (Disturbing Behavior) and Kate Hudson (200 Cigarettes), centers around a group of young coeds who plant a rumor that escalates out of control, leading to a web of sexual betrayal and revenge.

February: In an attempt to broaden its demo into teens, Nick Movies/Paramount’s Snow Day features a cast of newcomer teen hunks and hunk-ettes, as well as adult stars Chevy Chase, Mark Webber and Pam Grier. The film’s motley cast portrays a family’s misadventures when school is canceled for a day due to snow.

February 18: American Pie exec producer Warren Zide’s Flight 180 teen ensemble thriller, starring Devon Sawa (Idle Hands), Seann William Scott (American Pie) and Ali Larter (Varsity Blues), follows a metaphysical character of death who is never seen, but returns to reclaim the lives of a group of teens who survive a plane crash. The film is a co-pro between New Line Cinema, Zide-Perry Films and Hard Eight Pictures.

Spring: Taillights Fade by Trimark Pictures examines a road trip taken by a pair of young couples. Canadian director Malcom Ingrim cast teen star Denise Richards (Wild Things) alongside Elizabeth Berkeley (Showgirls), Breckin Meyer (Clueless) and Jake Busey (Starship Troopers). It was produced in Vancouver by Cadence Entertainment.

Summer: I’ll Be You from Phoenix Pictures and Columbia Pictures targets the 12 to 17 demo with a high school-based story line in which a popular jock and a social outcast team up to seduce the respective girls of their dreams.

Summer: The Vertical Limit taps into the teen extreme sports craze in a story about an ambitious mountain climber (Chris O’Donnell) who must rescue his sister (Robin Tunney from Supernova) when she’s stranded on a climb of K2. Some of the world’s preeminent climbers served as consultants and crew for the Columbia Pictures release.

Summer: A spin-off from the `80s TV show, Sony’s Charlie’s Angels lures teens with a `90s chick trio comprised of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and a third, as-yet-unnamed angel.

Summer: Male teens are the target ticket buyers for the CGI-laden Titan A.E., a 20th Century Fox sci-fi epic about a 19-year-old boy who saves the earth after an alien attack. (The film stars Matt Damon and Drew Barrymore.)

Scream if You Know What I Did Last Halloween is a comedic send-up of thriller/horror franchises from Halloween, to Friday the 13th, to Dimension’s own teen Scream franchise.

Rachel Blanchard of TV’s Clueless and Marley Shelton (Pleasantville) co-star in New Line’s Sugar, Spice and a Semi-Automatic, in which a cheerleader enlists the whole cheering squad to rob a bank. The film was inked by Drop Dead Gorgeous screenwriter Lona Williams.

For teens who can’t get enough of bodacious cyberheroine Lara Croft, Paramount offers Tomb Raider: The Movie, a live-action look at the Eidos Interactive character that has spawned a licensing phenomenon.

Road Trip, from Animal House creator Ivan Reitman, is a college pic starring four students who make a 1,000-mile trek to another college. It’s a co-production between Montecito Picture Company and DreamWorks.

MGM and Davis Entertainment serve up a satirical look at teen eating disorders with Munchies, a black comedy about three anorexic valley girls turned into cannibalistic zombies by an experimental diet pill.

New Line’s Happy Campers features critically acclaimed teen actress Dominique Swain (Lolita), now turning her talents to comedy in a story of college freshmen who spend their summers as camp counselors. The movie is written by Heathers scribe Daniel Waters and co-stars Brad Renfro.

Films in Development

The Bubble Factory:

A Fate Totally Worse than Death (L)

Columbia Pictures:

Riding in Cars With Boys (L)

Film Roman:

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (A)

MTV Films:

Celebrity Deathmatch (A) * Spy Girl (L) * Biting Temptations (L) * Alice (L) * Party Over Here (L)

New Line Cinema:

Gigantic (L) * Freddy vs. Jason (L)

Rhino Films: Pac-man Fever (L)