The film 'scored a 30, and you're in trouble if you're in the 60s.' 7. 'Seventy percent of the audience walked out, and some people were actually verbally angry,' Dugan recalled of the test screenings. Warden was so touched by the gesture that he agreed to take the role, but refused to take any of Dugan's potential earnings. Jack Warden played 'Big Ben' Healy, John Ritter's father, after Dugan offered Warden half of his net points (a percentage negotiated beforehand of the net profit to a movie). JACK WARDEN ONLY AGREED TO APPEAR AFTER DUGAN OFFERED HIM HALF OF HIS POINTS. 'He was funny as can be, and she's funny as can be, and they just hit it off,' Dugan told The Hollywood Reporter.

The two actors, cast as a married couple, met for the first time before a table read at Dugan's house. JOHN RITTER AND AMY YASBECK MET REHEARSING THE MOVIE. We want this kind of chaos.' Three hours later, Dugan learned he had the job. He stood on the studio president's coffee table and passionately proclaimed, 'You're looking at me like I'm f*cking nuts, and this is what we want.

DENNIS DUGAN STOOD UP ON A TABLE TO LAND THE DIRECTING GIG.ĭennis Dugan had never directed a feature film before, so he decided to make his pitch to Universal executives a memorable one. MACAULAY CULKIN AUDITIONED FOR THE LEAD.įortunately for Macaulay Culkin (who landed the starring role in Home Alone, which came out four months after Problem Child), casting director Valerie McCaffrey believed Michael Oliver was the right Junior after seeing him in a commercial. Simpson: American Crime Story) read a 1988 Los Angeles Times article by Dianne Klein titled 'An Adopted Boy-and Terror Begins.' It told the story of an Orange County couple who adopted a boy who was 'so disturbed that animals instinctively feared him.' While other writers pitched movies making the story into a horror film, Alexander and Karaszewski pitched it as a dark comedy. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon and co-create The People vs. Writing partners Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who would go on to write Ed Wood, The People vs. Neither the filmmakers nor the studio was expecting much from the film critics disliked it and advocacy groups spoke out against it-which made Problem Child's box office success (which led to two sequels and an animated television series) all the more surprising. John Ritter and Amy Yasbeck starred as the well-meaning Ben Healy and status-seeking Flo Healy, adoptive father and mother to Junior, thanks to the unscrupulous and strange-sounding Igor Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried). But its story-about a married couple who adopt a sweet kid, only to quickly realize that he's a pint-sized version of Satan who also happens to be pen pals with a serial killer-was not an all-ages affair.

John ritter problem child