Trivia / King Kong Lives

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $18 million. Domestic box office, $4,711,220. Ironically, the film actually made double its budget worldwide, but Dino de Laurentiis agreed to too low a percentage of the foreign grosses, thinking its Stateside box-office would make up for it, a gamble which backfired spectacularly.
• Creator Killer: King Kong Lives sent the career of director John Guillermin off the top floor of the Empire State Building and into a freefall; his projects after this were all on TV.
• Distanced from Current Events: In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, TBS pulled a scheduled airing of this film (replacing it with the Chevy Chase vehicle Funny Farm) solely because it opens with a Stock Footage recap of the World Trade Center-set climax and denouement of its predecessor.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The movie has not seen another home video release since 2004, and the DVD goes for a lot of money on sites like Amazon and eBay.
• Not Screened for Critics: A variation. The distributor wouldn't allow reviewers to show footage on the stations that they worked for. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert talked about this in their "Worst of 1986" special and even though they complied (despite refusing to sign forms that agreed to this request), still mercilessly trashed the film — Ebert recalled that watching kids at a screening swinging a door in the auditorium around was more entertaining than the film itself.
• Referenced by...: A key subplot in The Big Hit is built around a VHS tape of this film. It's rented by hitman Melvin from a video store, with him getting constant phone calls from the nerdy store clerk about it being overdue.
• Sequel Gap: Ten years since the previous film; this is acknowledged in-universe.
• What Could Have Been: Peter Weller was offered a part in the film, but he went to do RoboCop instead.