Macaulay Culkin is best known for his role as Kevin in Home Alone, but what made the young star decide to depart from the successful franchise?

SUMMARY

 Home Alone catapulted Macaulay Culkin into fame and established him as a household name in the early 1990s.
 The Home Alone franchise, written and produced by John Hughes, became an instant classic and is still considered a Christmas classic today.
 The absence of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 3 , along with the departure of other original cast members, contributed to the film’s disappointment and lack of success.

Home Alone is far more than just a great holiday movie, as it also sent actor Macaulay Culkin into the stratosphere as a household name.

Culkin’s presence dominated the early 1990s through his roles in family films like My Girl and Uncle Buck. Nevertheless, it was the Home Alone franchise that was responsible for his immense popularity as he starred as the mischievous yet resourceful Kevin McCallister.

Critically acclaimed filmmaker John Hughes — who was behind teen comedies like Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — both wrote and produced the Home Alone films, which became instant classics.

While the first two Home Alone films launched Culkin’s film career, he decided not to return for the franchise’s third installment. This movie ended up being a disappointment to many, though it is notable for being one of Scarlett Johansson’s first major roles. Culkin wasn’t the only star who didn’t return to Home Alone 3.

Director Chris Columbus, composer John Williams, and stars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern all decided against being part of the third film. The success of the former movies thus makes it perplexing as to why Macaulay Culkin didn’t return to his greatest role for Home Alone 3.

Updated by Timothy Blake Donohoo on December 15, 2023: The holiday season has many rewatching the old Home Alone movies, which are still considered Christmas classics. That’s at least the case for the first two movies, which starred then-child actor Macaulay Culkin.

In Home Alone 3, Kevin — the character that Culkin played — wasn’t the protagonist, and this was part of the reason why the movie was seen as unsuccessful.

Why Wasn’t Macauley Culkin in Home Alone 3?

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Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin began acting at merely four years old and received his first major film role alongside comedian John Candy in the 1989 film Uncle Buck.

Since Hughes also wrote and produced Uncle Buck, Culkin impressed the filmmaker enough to land the lead in Hughes’ Home Alone a year after Uncle Buck was released.

He became a household name at just 10 years old and starred in over a dozen other films in just seven years.

According to Uproxx, Home Alone 3 was originally supposed to be filmed at the same time as Home Alone 2. However, Culkin’s hiatus from acting at 14 years old after the 1994 film Richie Rich posed a problem for the franchise.

Macaulay Culkin wasn’t keen on returning for Home Alone 3, as he had grown tired of playing Kevin and other child roles (via IMDb). Without Culkin, Home Alone had lost its lead actor and had to search for a replacement.

Another piece of trivia from IMDb was that Culkin’s brother Kieran — who played Kevin’s bed-wetter cousin Fuller — was considered as a new lead but didn’t think he could live up to his brother’s performance in Home Alone 3.

The Home Alone Franchise Wasn’t The Same Without Original Cast Members

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With the studio dead set on producing Home Alone 3, concessions had to be made for the loss of the franchise’s familiar star. Debuting director Raja Gosnell — who later directed the first live-action Scooby-Doo movie — recruited Alex D. Linz to play the eight-year-old protagonist.

The studio also had to find replacements for the legendary gangster film star Pesci and Stern — who both left the franchise to pursue other film projects.

Even the music would have to be entirely different, with legendary composer John Williams not involved with the sequel. Thus, the cast of Home Alone 3 required new characters and entirely new faces, which was perhaps the biggest part of the movie’s undoing.

It might have been more logical to simply stop making films without the original stars, but there was definitely demand at the time for a Home Alone 3, at least one starring Macaulay Culkin.

Sadly, that didn’t happen in the third entry that moviegoers got, which was largely seen as a major step down. The comedy was a lot more rote in the third Home Alone, with the best moments simply being retreads of the first two entries in the series.

This issue might have been present in a version of the sequel with the original cast, but there would at least have been a sense of continuity. Thus, when it came to Home Alone 3, Macaulay Culkin’s departure was truly the root of the movie’s issues.

New Cast

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Alex D. Linz had big shoes to fill in Home Alone 3, especially since that meant replacing the now legendary Macaulay Culkin. For the most part, the child actor was actually well-received as the new protagonist Alex Pruitt, but sadly, the character simply wasn’t a patch on Culkin’s Kevin McAllister.

This has especially been the case in terms of retroactive reception, with some fans feeling that the planned sequel with Macaulay Culkin as a teenage Kevin sounded far more interesting. Alex D. Linz didn’t quite become the same cultural icon that Culkin was, with his only other role of similar prominence being the 2001 Disney movie Max Keeble’s Big Move.

This movie was itself a box office disappointment that’s been largely forgotten, despite ample promotion on commercials on the Disney Channel.

Strangely enough, the movie is most remembered by some for being one of Scarlett Johansson’s earliest roles. She got her cinematic start in the movie North, with Home Alone 3 coming out a few years afterward.

She would achieve her breakout in Sophia Coppala’s Lost In Translation in 2003, and Johansson entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe when she played Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow in the 2010 movie Iron Man 2.

She went on to play the character for several movies, finally gaining a solo film in 2021’s Black Widow. Conversely, rumors abound that Johansson might play Black Widow again in future movies.

The villainous Peter Beaupre was played by Aleksander Krupa/Olek Krupa, who’s since been in major movies such as Behind Enemy Lines, X-Men: First Class, and The Fate of the Furious.

The Legacy Of The Home Alone Movies

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Since their release, the first two Home Alone films are revered as some of the best “modern” Christmas must-see movies.

This is due to their sense of humor and how much they reveled in 1990s-era comedy, particularly when it came to kids.

Macaulay Culkin was a big part of why the movies succeeded, and his talent as a child actor was largely unrivaled by even the best kids of the era.

Thus, it was likely an impossible task to expect Home Alone 3 to succeed without his involvement. This fact was seemingly proven in 2002 with the release of the made-for-television movie Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House.

Said film brought back the character of Kevin McAllister to defend his future stepmother’s home from his old criminal nemesis Marv, but all the actors were portrayed by different people.

The movie was lambasted by fans and critics, with many seeing it as far worse than Home Alone 3. After all, it brought back the character that Macaulay Culkin had made famous, but the actor himself wasn’t involved.

2012’s Home Alone: The Holiday Heist was seen as barely being more competent, but not by much. The Disney+ streaming movieHome Sweet Home Alone, which came out in 2021, also received negative reviews, showcasing that it may have been time to put the franchise to rest.

It’s unfortunate given how beloved the first two Macaulay Culkin movies were, but the franchise’s downward spiral all started with Home Alone 3.