There’ve been plenty of big re-releases in theaters this year, mainly because 2024 is home to some sizable anniversaries in film and pop culture. The newest movie to make its way back to the big screen is Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, courtesy of reliable re-release distributor Fathom Events.
On Sunday, November 17 and then Wednesday the 20th, the sci-fi film will play in theaters again for those two days nationwide. It’s a continuation of Fathom’s Big Screen Classics that for this year, has previously included the likes of Blazing Saddles, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, and The Wizard of Oz. According to Fathom, each Fifth Element screening will also come with an introduction from film critic and historian Leonard Maltin that digs into the “continued influence of this landmark sci-fi fable.”
The Fifth Element originally released in 1997, directed by Besson and a script he co-wrote with Robert Mark Kamen, based off a story he came up when he was 16. In the film, Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas, a 23rd century Special Forces major turned taxi driver tasked with saving Earth by teaming up with a humanoid woman named Leeloo. To do so, they have to recover a set of stones that can help defend the planet against a cosmic evil that shows up every 5,000 years and the human mercenaries employed by the cosmic evil to stop the duo.
The film, which also stars Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker, and Ian Holm, was the most expensive European movie made back then. Most critics were on board with it, but the ones who weren’t really weren’t, and it picked up some nominations at that year’s Golden Raspberry and Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. Even so, it also won some film festival awards (like at Cannes and the British Academy Film Awards), and made $263.9 million. It was also the highest-grossing French film at the international box office, at least until 2011’s The Intouchables.
So if you’ve been hoping to see The Fifth Element again in theaters, here’s your chance, and you can grab tickets here.
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