When David Arquette recently expressed his desire to make a sequel to the 2000 buddy sports comedy film Ready to Rumble, it sparked a wave of nostalgia for when pro-wrestling was experiencing a boom in the 1990s, led by WCW and WWE. As a result of that boom, film studios realized there was a massive, highly engaged audience ready to spend money at the box office. Although released in the following decade, Ready to Rumble was fully conceived and filmed during the 90s boom, based on WCW.
A similar situation had occurred a decade earlier. In 1985, professional wrestling underwent a huge cultural evolution. The inaugural WrestleMania proved that wrestling could crossover with MTV, pop music, and mainstream celebrity culture- and Hollywood wanted to be a part of that evolution as well. The contrast between how low-cost 1980s cinema presented wrestling and how studios packaged it during the 1990s boom and beyond shows changes in movie production culture and mainstream marketing.
New World Pictures, the producer of the 1985 satire Grunt! The Wrestling Movie is a perfect example of a production company that produced the low-cost style pro-wrestling movie of the '80s. Founded in 1970 by Roger Corman, a well-known pioneer of producing and directing low-cost, high-efficiency films, it was sold in 1983 for $16.5 million to entertainment lawyers who strictly maintained Corman’s low-cost, high-volume philosophy. New World Pictures was built on the idea of identifying a rising pop-culture trend, producing a film to make money from it at a low cost, and getting it into theaters just in case the trend is actually a fad. Looking at the small promotions and deciding to make a parody based on them, Grunt! The Wrestling Movie mostly appealed to people who were wrestling fans specifically in the 1970s and/or early 1980s and especially if they were generally familiar with territories, which is why it is not well known and didn't achieve mainstream success. People who were first exposed to wrestling in the mid-1980s viewed it as being a nationalized television product, and were less likely to "get" Grunt! The Wrestling Movie.
Another example is Hemdale Film Corporation, which produced the 1986 action-comedy Body Slam. With an estimated production budget of roughly $3 million to $5 million, it focused on the spectacle of Western wrestling and starred Roddy Piper and Tonga Kid.
In 1989, No Holds Barred, distributed by New Line Cinema, proved that a major wrestling promotion could self-finance and market a feature action film, which drew everyone from children and their parents to casual fans who just wanted to see the courageous Hulk Hogan on the big screen as he faced theatrical villains. The film grossed $16.1 million on an $8 million budget.
While Hollywood was relatively financially cautious in the '80s regarding pro-wrestling-related movies, Ready to Rumble had a production budget of $24 million, financed through Bel Air Entertainment and Warner Bros., and was released in April 2000. With the wrestling shows in the movie having the same production elements as a WCW event and there being cameos by stars of the wrestling company, the expectation was that many of the people who watch wrestling on television every week would definitely buy a ticket to see Ready to Rumble. However, it only had a box office gross of $12.5 million, and since movie box office splits typically give approximately 50% to theaters, the studio's revenue was around $6 million. Critics of Ready to Rumble feel this was due to the film being a comedy that seemed to make fun of the wrestling business.
The changes in pro-wrestling’s presentation in movies reflect how Hollywood viewed the professional wrestling industry during each period. In the mid-1980s, studios at first treated wrestling as a possible fad, and slowly realized that this was not the case. By 2000, they recognized that pro-wrestling is a permanent fixture in culture. Today, wrestling movies focus on stories that are deeply human, showing that instead of only viewing the pro-wrestling industry as a source of entertainment, Hollywood now fully realizes that behind the characters in the ring are people who put their safety on the line to provide that entertainment.
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