| Big Trouble in Little China | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster by Drew Struzan | |
| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Written by |
|
| Adaptation by | |
| Produced by | Larry J. Franco |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
| Edited by | Steve Mirkovich Mark Warner Edward A. Warschilka |
| Music by | John Carpenter Alan Howarth |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox[1] |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States[1] |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $19–25 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $11.1 million |
Big Trouble in Little China (also known as John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China) is a 1986 American fantasy action-comedy film directed by John Carpenter, and starring Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun and James Hong. The film tells the story of truck driver Jack Burton (Russell), who helps his friend Wang Chi (Dun) rescue Wang's green-eyed fiancée from bandits in San Francisco's Chinatown. They go into the mysterious underworld beneath Chinatown, where they face an ancient sorcerer named David Lo Pan (Hong), who requires a woman with green eyes to marry him in order to be released from a centuries-old curse.[4]
Although the original screenplay by first-time screenwriters Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein was envisioned as a Western set in the 1880s, screenwriter W. D. Richter was hired to rewrite the script extensively and modernize it. The studio hired Carpenter to direct the film and rushed Big Trouble in Little China into production so that it would be released before a similarly themed Eddie Murphy film, The Golden Child, which was slated to come out around the same time. The project fulfilled Carpenter's long-standing desire to make a martial arts film.
Despite receiving generally positive reviews, the film was a commercial failure, grossing $11.1 million in North America, below its estimated $19 to $25 million budget. This left Carpenter disillusioned with Hollywood and influenced his decision to return to independent filmmaking. In later years, the film gained a steady audience on home video, and has become a cult classic.
- ^ a b c d "Big Trouble in Little China". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Archived from the original on September 16, 2015. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Muir2005was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p260
- ^ Roth, Dany (2020). "The reason the Big Trouble in Little China 2 writer hated the original". Looper. Archived from the original on April 9, 2021. Retrieved December 12, 2020.