The Fugitive opened in theaters on August 6, 1993 at No.1, grossing $23.8 million en route to dominating the box office for the next six weeks. Headlined by Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, the 127-minute high octane thriller would eventually gross $368.9 million on its $44 million budget.
“The Fugitive” Scores Big at the Box Office
“The Fugitive” finished No. 2 for the year on the box office charts behind Steven Spielberg‘s “Jurassic Park” and ahead of the Tom Cruise blockbuster “The Firm.”
Ford turned down the original “Jurassic Park” to make “The Fugitive.”
“The Fugitive” knocked “Rising Sun” out of the top spot on the box office chart. “Rising Sun,” which was in its second week in theaters, starred Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. Connery had previously starred with Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in the summer of 1989, while Snipes would star in “The Fugitive”‘s sequel “U.S. Marshals” five years later in the spring of 1998.
Audiences couldn’t get enough of Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, a respected vascular surgeon, who is wrongfully accused and convicted of murdering his wife Helen Kimble (Sela Ward) and on the run after escaping and attempting to clear his name and find his wife’s killer before it’s too late. Ford’s role as Kimble was sandwiched by his two appearances as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in the blockbuster films “Patriot Games” (1992) and “Clear and Present Danger” (1994). Ironically, Alec Baldwin was originally rumored to be cast as Kimble and Ford also replaced Baldwin as Jack Ryan after Baldwin starred with Sean Connery in “The Hunt for Red October” (1990).
Jones would go on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of U.S. Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard who, along with his and his staff relentlessly pursue the good doctor with a manhunt that begins at the scene of the escape that followed his prison transport bus crashing and subsequently into the path of an oncoming train that is derailed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-UknTStLp0
Kimble manages to evade the marshals first by stealing an ambulance and secondly by jumping into a waterfall over a spillway as he makes his way back to Chicago in order to identify the one-armed man who is the real killer. Kimble tells Gerard that he did not kill his wife to which the U.S. marshal responds “I don’t care!” It is immediately evident that Gerard is trying to solve the crime, only do his job which is to capture the escaped felon.
With help from his friend and colleague Dr. Charles Nichols (Jeroen Krabbe), Kimble gets enough money to rent a cheap apartment before going undercover at Cook County Hospital’s prosthetic department to acquire a list of patients matching his wife’s murderer. This leads Kimble to uncover a conspiracy involving the pharmaceutical company Devlin-MacGregor and its new drug called Provasic.
Director Andrew Davis Joins the A-List
Director Andrew Davis, whose previous credits included “Under Siege” starring Steven Seagal, “The Package” starring Gene Hackman (both of those films also starred Tommy Lee Jones) and “Code of Silence” starring Chuck Norris, vaulted to Hollywood’s A-list of directors after being at the helm of the tension-packed thriller. Davis would not return to direct “U.S. Marshals” as he was working on “A Perfect Murder” (1998) starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow. As of this post, Davis’ most recent directorial effort was “The Guardian” (2006) starring Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher and Sela Ward.
In anticipation of “The Fugitive”‘s 30th anniversary, Andy Greene posted an oral history of the now-legendary film for Rolling Stone that highlights the chaotic production that began without a finished script and was on an extremely tight schedule due to Ford’s availability and Warner Bros. announcing its August 6 release date. Ford and Jones were all but certain that the film was going to be a complete flop.
According to co-star Daniel Roebuck (U.S. Marshal Bobby Biggs), “Harrison Ford said “Oh, man, this is going to be my ‘Hudson Hawk’” in reference to the notorious 1991 flop that starred Bruce Willis.
Fortunately, “The Fugitive” would not only be a massive hit, but would garner seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.
While “The Fugitive” was based on the series that starred David Jansen and aired from 1963-67, it’s enormous success also inspired a new series in 2000 from the movie’s producers including Arnold Kopelson. The series featured Tim Daly (“The Sopranos,” “Wings”) as Kimble and Mykelti Williamson (“Forrest Gump,” “Heat”) as Gerard. CBS cancelled the series after one season.
There was another version of “The Fugitive” that was released in August 2020 on Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived, short-form streaming platform Quibi which generated content for viewing on mobile devices. Episodes ran for six-nine minutes and starred Kiefer Sutherland as Detective Clay Bryce in search of Mike Ferro played by Boyd Holbrook and can currently be seen on The Roku Channel.
THE FUGITIVE (Rated PG-13)
Scale of 1-10: 9
