You know what tends to happen in this industry; one film hits it big and then others try to capitalize on that success. That’s exactly what led to sky high expectations for the 1998 horror release, The Faculty - expectations the movie failed to meet.
Drawing from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Faculty involves aliens that take a pass on blowing “up the White House Independence Day style” and instead opt to “sneak in through the backdoor” by assuming control of a high school teaching staff who then infect the student population. Not only did the film feature a stellar ensemble including Salma Hayek, Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jon Stewart and more, but The Faculty was also riding the Scream wave.
Scream hit theaters in December of 1996, became a box office smash and also reinvigorated the horror genre. Why wouldn’t another high quality teen horror movie with a December release date two years later not have all the potential in the world? Turns out, multiple theatrical viewings from yours truly wasn’t enough to turn The Faculty into another box office winner. The movie opened up with $11.6 million and only went to gross $40.3 million at the domestic box office.
Given all that Scream hype, one might wonder what The Faculty experience was like for its rising young ensemble, especially someone like Jordana Brewster who was making her feature debut. While on Collider Ladies Night celebrating the release of F9, Brewster took a moment to look back on how her expectations for The Faculty compared to how things panned out:
“It was sort of the inverse of Fast and Furious, right? So with The Fast and Furious, I was like, ‘This is a small movie about cars. It’s a really fun summer project. Everyone’s really good looking. This is gonna be fun, but who knows where it’s gonna lead?’ With The Faculty it was like, ‘You guys, this is gonna be huge. Look at all these successes around us,’ like She’s All That and Scream. And it was also Dimension, which was doing really well, that studio. And then Tommy Hilfiger was doing our campaign! So we all thought it was gonna be huge. And then it turned out it wasn’t so huge. We thought it was gonna be massive, I think it was a Christmas opening, and then not so big. So it was a good lesson. But it was a cult classic so that’s really cool.”
Given the fact that the success of Scream spawned a franchise, I opted to clarify what Brewster meant by The Faculty being “huge.” Was it just about big box office numbers or were there early talks of a potential series? She explained:
“I think it was more like we all thought we were gonna be these huge teen stars and not be able to walk down the street, and it didn’t quite work out that way. But at the same time, being on set, it was my first time shooting a movie ever, but also we were in Austin, Texas and working with Robert Rodriguez and Salma Hayek was in it and Jon Stewart would test his material on us, his comedic routine. It was so much fun. I loved working on that film.”
The Faculty isn’t the only title on Brewster’s filmography that deserved far more credit than it received upon release. Keep an eye out for her full episode of Collider Ladies Night to hear more about how D.E.B.S. went on to become a cult classic and how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning deserves more respect for being one of the best in the series.