Stop me if you've heard this one...

[RossyG]

There were nearly two films in 1974 about high rise blocks on fire inspired by separate novels - The Tower and The Glass Inferno - that were themselves inspired by the construction of the World Trade Center. In the end, Fox and Warner blended the two to make The Towering Inferno.

[Roger Ryan]

There were nearly two films in 1974 about high rise blocks on fire inspired by separate novels - The Tower and The Glass Inferno - that were themselves inspired by the construction of the World Trade Center. In the end, Fox and Warner blended the two to make The Towering Inferno.

...and, yet, TERROR ON THE 40TH FLOOR, a TV movie-of-the-week, got the jump on THE TOWERING INFERNO by being broadcast in September of '74, two months before the latter film's release...so there ended up being two films after all!

[aox]

1998 was all about asteroids!

Armageddon and Deep Impact

[Matt]

Is it some sort of meta-statement on the theme of this thread that so many people keep posting the same examples?

[matrixschmatrix]

It's really weird but I feel like people are posting things that have been posted in this thread before.

[HistoryProf]

despite the redundancies, please keep them coming. I'm shocked there aren't any 70s disaster parallels yet.

[Feego]

1943: Robert Stevenson's Jane Eyre and Val Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie

[Murdoch]

1997 had the two monster movies Mimic and The Relic, both sporting similar taglines (Mimic: "For thousands of years man has been evolution's greatest creation... until now"; The Relic: "The next evolution in terror").

[colinr0380]

That's a great one Murdoch! How about 1997's duelling aircraft hijack thrillers with Air Force One and Turbulence?

Turbulence is my pick of those two - while Gary Oldman goes all out with the (Russian?) accent, nothing can beat Ray Liotta at his most psychopathically nutty! He's also having more fun throughout!

[LQ]

How about 1997's duelling aircraft hijack thrillers with Air Force One and Turbulence?

Throw '97's Con Air into that mix, too!

[Mr Sausage]

And Executive Decision (my favourite of the four) just the year before.

[PfR73]

1994-The year of skydiving action: Drop Zone & Terminal Velocity.

[colinr0380]

I think I can still sing all of the lyrics to Con Air's catchy country and western theme song! ("How can I liveee without you, I wanna know") Executive Decision is great too and would have been a great capper to Steven Seagal's action man career if he hadn't gone on for another couple of decades afterwards!

Isn't Terminal Velocity the film where Charlie Sheen has to unlock Nastassia Kinski from the trunk of a car that he has just driven off the back of an aircraft carrier and then parachute her to safety? The audacity of that sequence is something only seen in computer games like Saints Row The Third these days!

[mizo]

1940 loved Thomas Edison. Edison, the Man with Spencer Tracy and Young Tom Edison with Mickey Rooney, both from MGM.

[captveg]

How has this thread gone on so long without the mentioning of the old-becoming-magically-young/body switch movies of 1987-88: Like Father Like Son, 18 Again!, & Big?

[wigwam]

Vice Versa should be exempt since it had better actors tho

[domino harvey]

Vice Versa is the only body switching movie anyone needs

[Markson]

No love for Dream a Little Dream?

[domino harvey]

Dueling Zelda Fitzgerald biopics coming soon starring Scarlett Johansson and Jennifr Lawrence

[knives]

They really should have just stuck with Allison Pill.

[domino harvey]

That casting was so perfect that I still think of Pill when I picture Zelda Fitzgerald

[Swift]

Weirdly, at one time, there were two Jungle Book movies in production at the same time. Favreau's has been released obviously, but Andy Serkis' directorial effort has since been pushed back to 2018.