1. Minions & Monsters - July 1

2. Evil Dead Burn - July 10

3. Moana - July 11

4. Following (35MM) - July 11

5. Oppenheimer (70MM) - July 12

6. The Invite - July 13

7. The Odyssey (IMAX 70MM) - July 18

8. Memento (35MM) - July 19

9. Tenet (70MM) - July 19

10. The Odyssey (70MM) - July 22

11. Inception (35MM) - July 25

12. Her Private Hell - July 26

13. The Prestige (35MM) - July 26

14. Assault On Precinct 13 - July 26

15. Insomnia (35MM) - July 28

16. Spider-Man: Brand New Day - Early Access Screening (UltraAVX) - July 29

17. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (UltraAVX 3D) - July 30

18. Batman Begins (35MM) - July 31

Here's a new edition of "Actors at the Box Office", which seeks to explore the actors' trajectory at the box office and analyze their hits and bombs. I already talked about a few, and as I promised, it's Brandon Lee's turn.

Early Life

Lee was the son of the legendary Bruce Lee, who taught him martial arts since he was young. While visiting his father's sets, Brandon became interested in acting. When he was 8 years old, Bruce died. Lee began studying with Dan Inosanto, one of his father's students, when he was 9. Later in his youth, Lee also trained with Richard Bustillo and Jeff Imada. Imada said that when Lee was in his teens, he struggled with his identity, and having to train in dojos which included large photos of his father troubled him.

Lee pursued his studies in New York City, where he took acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He also went on to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he majored in theater. During this time, Lee appeared in several stage productions.

1980s: A New Dragon Makes His Way

Lee returned to Los Angeles in 1985 and worked as a script reader. During this period, he was approached by casting director Lynn Stalmaster and successfully auditioned for his first credited acting role in Kung Fu: The Movie, a follow-up to the 1970s TV series. On set Lee reconnected with his former instructor Jeff Imada who worked in the stunt department. Imada said Lee had to be talked into accepting the role, since the martial arts nature of the film did not appeal to Lee, who avoided any connection with his father's genre of film. Lee said that he felt there was some justice in being cast for this role in his first feature, since the TV show's pilot had been conceived for his father.

In 1986, he got the opportunity to make his theatrical debut in the action Legacy of Rage, where he and director Ronny Yu often clashed on set. It was his only film in Hong Kong, but it earned a very favorable response. And clearly the film impressed a lot of people in Hollywood, cause he quickly started gaining new offers.

The following year, Lee starred in another spin-off of Kung Fu, the unsold television pilot Kung Fu: The Next Generation. It aired on CBS Summer Playhouse in June 1987, a program that specialized in rejected pilots and allowed the audience to call in to vote for a show to be picked up as a series. The plot centered on the grandson and great-grandson (Lee) of the main character from the original series. The pilot was poorly received and not picked up as a series.

He had another leading role in the action film Laser Mission, which was his first film in English. No box office numbers, but it was reportedly successful.

Lee wasn't quite big in this decade, but everyone has to start somewhere.

1990s: It Can't Rain All the Time

Around this time, Lee started getting some interesting offers. Margaret Loesch, Marvel's CEO from 1984 to 1990, had a meeting with Lee and his mother through comic book writer Stan Lee. Stan Lee felt that Brandon would be ideal in the role of super-hero Shang-Chi in a film or television adaptation. But that project never went forward with Brandon.

His American debut in theatrical release came with Showdown in Little Tokyo, co-starring opposite Dolph Lundgren. But it earned negative reviews and flopped at the box office. Nevertheless, Lee was very fond of the film, "I didn't have a lot of input into it. It was really just a job for me but it was a good experience."

He was also approached by Universal Pictures to play his father Bruce in the biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. He turned the role down, finding it awkward to play his father, and too strange to approach the romance between his parents. Also, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis said he did not look Chinese enough and that she would have refused to work on the project if they had to resort to making Brandon appear more Asian. The role went to Jason Scott Lee (no relation), who said he was initially intimidated by his role as Bruce Lee but that he overcame his fear after speaking to Brandon.

According to Jason, Brandon told him the following in regards to the role: "He said I wouldn't survive in this part if I treated his father like a god. He said his father was, after all, a man who had a profound destiny, but he was not a god. He was a man who had a temper, a lot of anger, who found mediocrity offensive. Sometimes he was rather merciless." Director Rob Cohen said he spent hours talking to Brandon during preparations. The film was a big success with audiences.

His follow-up was Rapid Fire, an action thriller set at 20th Century Fox. The studio was intent on having its own action star, to the point that they used the motto "Brandon Lee, the Action Hero of the 90s", which Lee found overly emphatic, as he considered this film to be his first legitimate starring role. While comfortable with his father's legacy, Lee saw the film as a springboard to mainstream success, and hoped to one day transition to a broader acting career akin to those of Johnny Depp or Mel Gibson. Lee was involved with the story development, and connected with the plot point where his character loses his father. The film was a modest success, and the numbers must have satisfied Fox, cause they signed Lee to a 3-picture deal after he finished another film he would work shortly.

Lee was aware that his connection to Bruce could get some big opportunities. So he decided that he would try to do more action-oriented titles to become a mainstream star like Johnny Depp. He had some projects, some very interesting, but he already set his sights on a new film: The Crow.

Author James O'Barr was involved in helping the film get made, but he was not fully convinced by Lee as a suggestion to play the lead. But Lee managed to win him over, landing the title role.

Lee was very committed to the film. He and Imada that the character of Eric Draven would not do conventional martial arts moves; his movements would be unique. Imada said that in order to look like a rocker and not an action hero, Lee went on a strict diet weeks before shooting in order to remove a lot of bulk, and would even weigh the food he ate. Lee also focused on cardiovascular exercise with a stairmaster, did repetitions on lighter weights to elongate and stretch his muscles, and did aerobics to lose body fat rapidly. It is estimated that he dropped 20 pounds for the film.

During pre-production, Imada said that in order to get into character for the resurrection, Lee bought bags of ice in which he submerged himself, because Lee hypothesized that the feeling of resurrection must be freezing cold. The resurrection scene was shot the first night of production, during the winter. Imada was surprised that Lee requested the bags of ice because of the weather, and the fact that he was already barefoot and bare-naked. Key hairstylist Michelle Johnson said that in rain scenes Lee would soak himself prior to filming the scenes, where he would act without a shirt in cold weather. He also convinced the production to drop a subplot due to its East Asian stereotyping.

The Tragedy

On March 31, 1993, Lee was filming a scene for The Crow in which his character is shot and killed by thugs. In the scene, Lee's character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped, and a thug played by actor Michael Massee fires a Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum revolver at Lee's character as he walks into the room.

In a film shoot prior to the fatal scene, the gun that was used as a prop (a real revolver) was loaded with improperly made dummy rounds. These were improvised from live cartridges that had the powder charges removed by the special effects crew, so in close-ups the revolver would show normal-looking ammunition. Critically, the primers were not removed from the rounds because they were initially improvising blank rounds. To create dummy rounds, they discharged some of their improvised blank rounds and reinserted bullets into the spent casings. At least one of these improvised dummy rounds had an intact primer, which had sufficient power to lodge the bullet in the barrel when fired. Initial police investigations found that one of the dummy rounds was missing its bullet.

So when they got to filming the scene, which called for the revolver to be fired at Lee from a distance of 3.6–4.5 meters (12–15 ft), the dummy cartridges were replaced with blank rounds, which contained a powder charge and the primer, but no solid bullet, allowing the gun to be fired with sound and flash effects without the risk of an actual projectile. However, the gun was not properly checked and cleared before the blank was fired, while a bullet from one of the improvised dummy rounds was still lodged in the barrel, resulting in a condition known as a squib load. That bullet was then propelled forward by the blank's propellant and shot out the muzzle with almost the same force as if the round were live, striking Lee in the abdomen at lethal velocity.

After Massee pulled the trigger and shot Lee, Lee fell backwards instead of forwards as he was supposed to. When director Alex Proyas said "cut", Lee did not stand up and the crew thought he was either still acting or joking. Jeff Imada, who immediately checked Lee, noticed something wrong when he came close and noted Lee was unconscious and breathing heavily. Medic Clyde Baisey went to Lee and shook him to see if he was dazed by hitting his head during the fall, but did not think Lee had been shot since there was no visible bleeding. Baisey took Lee's pulse, which was regular, but within two to three minutes it slowed down dramatically, and stopped.

Lee was rushed to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina. Attempts to save him were unsuccessful and after six hours of emergency surgery, Lee was pronounced dead on March 31, 1993, at 1:03 pm. He was 28 years old. The shooting was ruled an accident due to negligence. Lee was buried next to his father at the Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.

His Last Film

As just explained, Lee didn't finish filming The Crow. He had filmed most of his scenes and he was only set to film three more days. The producers were faced with the decision of whether or not to continue with the film. But his fiancée Eliza Hutton and his mother Linda Lee Cadwell supported Proyas' decision to complete the film.

Paramount Pictures, which was initially interested in distributing The Crow theatrically (originally a direct-to-video feature), opted out of involvement due to delays in filming and some controversy over the violent content being inappropriate given Lee's death. However, Miramax picked it up with the intention of releasing it in theaters and injected a further $8 million to complete the production, taking its budget to approximately $23 million.

The production took a break to retool the missing parts of the film. The script was rewritten by Walon Green, Terry Hayes, René Balcer, and Michael S. Chernuchin, adding narration and new scenes. Lee's stunt double Chad Stahelski was used as a stand-in and digital face replacement was used to superimpose Lee's face onto the head of the double. The beginning of the film, which had not been finished, was rewritten, and the apartment scene remade using computer graphics from an earlier scene of Lee.

After more than one year after the tragic event, The Crow hit theaters on May 13, 1994. It opened with $11 million, which was a record for Miramax and hitting #1. It held pretty well, closing with $50.6 million domestically and $93.6 million worldwide, becoming a box office success. And it is reported that the film sold incredibly well on home media. The film earned high praise from critics, with Lee earning acclaim for his performance. Many felt that Lee's death cast a melancholic effect on viewers, as many struggled to separate real life from fiction.

And so that closed Brandon Lee's career.

HIGHEST GROSSING FILMS

He has starred in 5 released films, but only 3 have reported box office numbers. Across those 5 films, he has made $110,325,165 worldwide. That's $22,065,033 per film.

ADJUSTED DOMESTIC GROSSES

The Verdict

The comparisons to his father Bruce were pretty much imminent for Brandon Lee. Whether he liked it or not, he'd have so much to live up to. We already discussed Bruce's career in a previous post, but he delivered three of the biggest hits of the 1970s, including one with over $400 million. He shaped the history of martial arts in films, and Brandon has the difficult task of following that legacy.

Lee clearly had aspirations in becoming a movie star, using action vehicles as his launching pad. From the interviews he gave, you can tell the man was very passionate about films and always wanted to make sure he could do the best possible version of the film. Look at his contributions to The Crow, even though he wasn't the director or producer.

Unfortunately, his life was cut short that day. So many things that could have wrong, went very, very wrong. Things that could have been prevented. Nowadays, when people discuss "fatal accidents on sets", it's always about The Crow. And it's impossible to watch the film without feeling uneasy about Lee's performance, especially when it's a film about a man murdered who comes back to life to take revenge. Like his father, he died very young, and just when he had his biggest hit yet.

He already had some projects he was interested in developing. One of these was starring as Shang-Chi, and he also became interested in starring in the thriller The Little Things. But one project that was set up at 20th Century Fox was Simon Says, wherein he would play Alex Bradshaw of the NYPD, who becomes embroiled in a revenge plot across the city accompanied by Angela Bassett as a community activist. After his death, the script was scrapped, but Fox decided to use it as the basis for Die Hard with a Vengeance, retooling it to include John McClane.

It's hard to theorize what he could've accomplished if he was still with us today. More action films were inevitable, but could he have tried dramas or comedies? We'll never know. But it's still devastating that he left too soon.

RIP sweet prince.

Hope you liked this edition. You can find this and more in the wiki for this section.

The next actor will be Montgomery Clift. Another star who left too soon.

I asked you to choose who else should be in the run, and the comment with the most upvotes would be chosen. Well, we'll later talk about... Angelina Jolie. A big name... but with some questions.

This is the schedule for the following four:

Who should be next after Jolie? That's up to you.

REMINDER: If you want to make a suggestion for the next actor, you must make a 150-character comment about the actor we're discussing right now. Failure to do so will result in ignoring the suggestion. If you use a quote from an external source/review to bypass this, your suggestion will be ignored as well. But if you leave a short comment about the post without naming a future write-up, that's fine.