Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: My Science Project

In 1983, high school computer prodigy Matthew Broderick came perilously close to triggering a global thermonuclear war in John Badham’s WarGames. After that movie deservedly became a surprise box office smash, studios rushed to greenlight projects featuring teen heroes (usually played by actors in their early-to-mid 20s) with an interest in what would come to be referred to as STEM subjects. And if those scientific pursuits happened to include alien technology or time travel, so much the better.

This mini-boom of teen-oriented sci-fi (or, at least, sci-fi-ish) comedies hit its peak in the summer of 1985. In July, Universal released Robert Zemeckis’ Back To The Future, a project Disney had actually turned down a couple years earlier. It went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year. But the trend kicked into overdrive about a month later with the near-simultaneous release of Weird Science, Real Genius and Disney/Touchstone’s own entry in the 1985 Box Office Science Fair, My Science Project.