(Photo by New Line Cinema / courtesy Everett Collection)
Movies With Just Numbers For Titles, Ranked by Tomatometer
Studio producer Louis B. Mayer (the B stands for Billion) coined the classic Hollywood adage still followed to this day: “You haven’t made it in this town until you’ve made a movie whose title is just a number.” And when one of the letters in MGM talks, you listen. So ever since, directors, being a superstitious lot, have obliged, validating their careers to greatness.
Steven Spielberg, for example, directed 1941, which had nothing to do with anything in the World War II-set comedy, but was actually a sly reference to the number of times the shark broke down in his previous movie, The Sugarland Express. Inspired by Spielberg, Federico Fellini also took a meta approach to naming his opus 8 1/2, which referred to his wife Giulietta Masina’s shoe size. David Fincher took us around the world in Seven, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Temple of Artemis to the jacked Statue of Zeus at Olympia.
Also on this list: The 2009 apocalyptic CG movie 9 and its 2009 reboot starring Daniel Day-Lewis. There’s Thirteen, its sequel Twelve, and its prequel Fourteen, with the trilogy recently released on 4K Ultra HD as The Whole Bloody Affair. 1408 is a boobs and blood-soaked re-creation of the Battle of Bramham Moor, which ended the Percy Rebellion and put the Earl of Northumberland in his place once and for all.
42 is a documentary on Douglas Adams. 5-25-77 (pronounced “fifty-two thousand, five-hundred and seventy-seven”) has something to do with nerds. And Billy Crystal directed 61*. If you turn the DVD case around, you’ll see the asterisk text at the bottom reminding viewers that this film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this screen.
Most recently, Adam Driver starred in 65, which refers to 65,000,000 years ago when dinosaurs could order at restaurants without getting weird looks, but the title was shortened when studio executives got nervous about so many commas on a movie poster.
What fantastic voyages await us in future movies with titles that are just numbers? What number will get the star treatment next? 54? 11,287? 6.3? Current estimations suggest we’ll run out of numbers to use within a decade, but that’s why Pauline Kael invented remakes. —Alex Vo
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