1994’s “Airheads” stars Adam Sandler alongside Brendan Fraser and Steve Buscemi as three struggling musicians in the metal band The Lone Rangers. After many unsuccessful attempts to get record producers to listen to their music, the trio head to a radio station to try and get a song broadcast. When the DJ refuses to play the song, they hold the place up (with what are later revealed to be plastic guns) in a last-ditch effort to get their demo on the air.
While Buscemi was already well known when “Airheads” came out, neither Sandler nor Fraser were the heavyweights that they would later become. Fraser’s first box office success wouldn’t come until 1997 with “George of the Jungle” and Sandler was still a year away from releasing “Billy Madison,” his breakthrough movie. While Sandler was a regular fixture on “Saturday Night Live,” he didn’t have enough star power to attract large numbers of moviegoers, and a wave of negative reviews likely didn’t help “Airheads,” either.
What’s more, “Airheads” launched when metal music had become unfashionable. Grunge was the in-vogue genre at the time, making it harder to market the film to a wide audience. It grossed just $5.7 million at the U.S. box office, and, with a reported budget of $11 million, became known as a flop. “Airheads” went on to become something of a cult hit in metal circles, but was otherwise lost to history.
