1. The total budget for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was $28 million. Almost a sixth of that went straight to Macaulay Culkin who was paid $4.5 million to reprise the role of Kevin McCallister. This remains the biggest salary ever paid to a child actor for a single film, and a huge increase in salary for the 12 year old who earned $110,000 for the original.
Trust me, with that kind of money in the bank, he ain't traveling coach...
2. When Kevin gets on the New York bound plane and sits next to a French man, he asks him if he's ever been to Florida. The man responds in French. If you're not fluent in the language this is what he said...
"What's that? I'm from France and I'm a tourist here, it's my first time coming to America. Do you know a good restaurant? or maybe your parents they know a good place? why aren't you responding? you speak a bit of French right? I don't speak English at all, give me a bit of help at least. My name is Andre, what's your name?"For the French release of the film, Andre's voice was dubbed into Spanish.
3. Much of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was actually shot on location at the Plaza Hotel in a Central Park suite. The owner of the hotel at the time made several demands upon the production in order to sign-off on them using it. One was to write him into the film...
Yep, the owner was Donald Trump, who basically forced himself onto the production (that doesn't sound at all Trump-ish, does it?). Never one to shy from a bit of self-promotion, Trump had a rule that if anyone wanted to film in any of his properties they had to write him in to the production. In most cases (like Scent Of A Woman & Suburbicon) the scene would then be cut, but, for reasons unknown, Home Alone 2 left his forceful cameo in.
4. In another bit of shameless self-promotion, Trump also made the condition that the phone number given for the Plaza in the movie was an actual working number for the hotel.
To this day, the Plaza Hotel offers "The Home Alone 2 Experience" where guests can pay to stay in a room similar to the room Kevin stayed in, receive Home Alone gifts including the movies, and take a limo to see some of the filming locations including the toy store upon which Duncan's Toy Chest was based.
5. One thing Trump's Plaza didn't have, though, was an on-site swimming pool. Because of this the pool scene was shot at the Four Seasons in Chicago, Illinois - and this was an actual Four Seasons Hotel, not Four Seasons Total Landscaping (although can you imagine how great that would've been, with Kevin diving into a pool flanked by a cement mixer on one side and an adult book store on the other, whilst Rudy Giuliani screams election fraud in front of a garage door. I'd watch that film!).
(We're not wanting to make this an overly Trump-centric article, so we'll give you this nugget for free about the supposed wonderful deal-maker Trump is - He bought The Plaza Hotel which is featured in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York from The Childs Company (now called Sonesta) for $407.5 million dollars in 1988, and then sold it to Saudi and Asian investors for $325 million dollars in 1995! Make Tax Fraud Great Again.)
6. The Talkboy cassette recorder was produced as a tie-in for the movie by Tiger Electronics based on specifications provided by John Hughes and the movie studio. It sold particularly well during the Christmas 1993 season, after Home Alone 2 was released on home video.
7. Kevin's $967.43 room service bill indicates that he ordered 2 chocolate cakes, 6 chocolate mousses with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream topped with M&Ms, chocolate sprinkles, cherries, nuts, marshmallows, caramel syrup, chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, whipped cream and bananas, 6 custard flans, a pastry cart, 8 strawberry tarts, and 36 chocolate covered strawberries. Yum!
8. The "pigeon attack" sequence was, according to Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, one of the worst experiences either of them have had on a film set or otherwise. Hundreds of pigeons were trained over a period for some 12 weeks before shooting the scene. On the day of the shoot itself, the crew covered the pair with real birdseed and let about three hundred of the trained pigeons loose on them! Daniel Stern later revealed that a pigeon actually flew into his mouth trying to get the seed.
9. Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was novelized in 1992 to coincide with the release of the film. In the beginning of the novelization, there is a prologue, which ends up being Marv's nightmare in prison. He and Harry sneak away from the cops and return to Kevin's house to seek revenge on the young McCallister. Kevin bolts into the garage with Marv and Harry in hot pursuit. Harry and Marv end up triggering extra traps that Kevin had set up, whilst Kevin watches as Marv ends up triggering a trap where a running lawnmower falls on his head (this was a trap actually featured in Home Alone 3) before he wakes up from his nightmare.
10. Despite receiving mixed to negative reviews from critics, who found it to be overly similar to its predecessor, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York earned over $173 million in revenue in the United States and $359 million worldwide, against that aforementioned budget of $28 million. Worldwide, the film is the third highest-grossing film released in 1992, behind The Bodyguard and Aladdin, so it was clear that 20th Century Fox would always be interested in another sequel.
Home Alone 3 did arrive in 1997, and was actually pitched alongside Home Alone 2 with the orignal intention of them being shot back to back. Because of Macaulay Culkin's massive payday for Lost In New York, the studio bulked at that idea and only greenlit the one film. By the time a production on 2 was mooted, Culkin had quit acting so the story was reworked. The law of diminishing returns kicked in and this film, the made-for-TV Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House and the ABC Family production Home Alone: The Holiday Heist were all something of a disappointment.
After resurrecting the character of Kevin MCAllister in 2018 for a successful commercial for Google Assistant, a sixth installment of the Home Alone series was rumoured, and eventually commissioned by Disney+, with a currently scheduled Christmas 2021 release date. The new film will star Archie Yates, from Jojo Rabbit, as the young protagonist left to fend for himself, with a cameo by Macaulay Culkin as a grown up Kevin McAllister.
Previously
12 Things You Might Not Know About HOME ALONE
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