SEEING DOUBLE
Bugs, time travel and monsters: When two movies about the same thing come out at nearly the same time
The documentary RBG (now playing in select cities) and the Felicity Jones-starring Ruth Bader-Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex (coming this fall) are the latest additions to a long history of twin films — the phenomenon in which conceptually similar projects are released around the same time.
Just in the past year, both Dunkirk and Darkest Hour were about the same inspiring evacuation in the Second World War, while Rough Night and Girls Trip depicted college friends’ rowdy reunions.
Here are some of the more quirky pairings of twin films.
Jezebel (March 1938) and Gone With the Wind (December 1939) Legend has it that Bette Davis, who plays Julie Marsden in Jezebel, was offered the lead role after she failed to land the part of Scarlett O’Hara. Although the timeline is iffy — Vivien Leigh wasn’t cast until late 1938 — it’s easy to see how the story came to be. Both films centred on headstrong Southern belles involved in messy love affairs during the U.S. Civil War.
Harlow (May 1965) and Harlow (June 1965)
Both biopics centred on the life of the American actress and 1930s sex symbol Jean Harlow, who died at 26 of complications from kidney failure. The blackand-white Magna version of Harlow’s life, starring Carol Lynley, received much less attention than the Carroll Baker-starring counterpart.
Other twin-film biopics include 2005’s Capote, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman played Truman Capote a year before Toby Jones did in Infamous. Jared Leto portrayed long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine in 1997’s Prefontaine the year before Billy Crudup did in Without Limits.
Yours, Mine and Ours (April 1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (August 1968)
These movies explored the blended family premise a year before The Brady Bunch debuted. Yours, Mine and Ours, starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, drew from the reallife story of Helen and Frank Beardsley, a couple famous for parenting 20 children after their marriage in 1961.
The family in With Six You Get Eggroll features Doris Day, Brian Keith, her three sons and his daughter.
Gremlins (June 1984) and Ghoulies (March 1985)
In Gremlins, a child receives a koala-looking creature as a pet and is instructed to never expose it to bright light, water or feed it after midnight. He does all three, obviously, and the pet spawns a bunch of terrifying monsters.
The main character in Ghoulies similarly unleashes a host of fiendish creatures after he performs a ceremony from one of his father’s books on black magic.
Back to the Future (July 1985) and Peggy Sue Got Married (October 1986)
Whereas Marty McFly is flung back to the 1950s and tasked with making sure the younger versions of his parents fall in love — Peggy Sue, facing marital trouble with her high school sweetheart, wakes up in 1960 and gets to relive her youth.
K-9 (April 1989) and
Turner & Hooch (July 1989)
The aptly named K-9, the first in what became a three-part series, centres on a cop (Jim Belushi) who is assigned a drug-sniffing German shepherd named Jerry Lee while working to bust a drug lord.
Turner & Hooch finds Tom Hanks as an officer who inherits his friend’s dog, Hooch, after the owner is murdered.
Rookie of the Year (July 1993) and Little Big League (June 1994) Two 12-year-old boys end up working with major league baseball teams: Henry, of Rookie of the Year, becomes such a powerful pitcher after a broken arm heals strangely that he is signed by the Chicago Cubs. Billy, of Little Big League, inherits control of the Minnesota Twins after his grandfather, the team’s owner, dies.
Antz (September 1998) and A Bug’s Life (November 1998)
Z, the neurotic main character of Antz, works to save his colony from a scheming totalitarian. Flik, the misfit protagonist of A Bug ’s Life, defends his colony against evil grasshoppers. Both projects are strange to watch in the #MeToo era — Woody Allen voices Z, while A Bug ’s Life was directed by John Lasseter and stars Kevin Spacey as one of the grasshoppers.
Deep Impact (May 1998) and Armageddon (June 1998) Foreign objects are hurtling through space toward our planet, and the only way to save everyone is for a team of Americans to blow the darn things up. In Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact, journalist Tea Leoni discovers that the government is hiding the crisis, which forces President Morgan Freeman to announce that astronaut Robert Duvall and company will attempt to blow the comet up. In Armageddon, NASA puts together a group of men to drill a hole into an asteroid and set off a nuclear bomb.
No Strings Attached (January 2011) and Friends With Benefits (July 2011)
These movies are so similar that no one can keep them straight. Both include one-half of the Ashton Kutcher-Mila Kunis power couple, with Natalie Portman starring opposite Kutcher and Justin Timberlake opposite Kunis. Both involve two close friends deciding to keep their relationship purely sexual but ending up with feelings for each other anyway.