Sydney Pollack's 1993 thriller "The Firm" was the first film in a long series of mega-hits to be based on the literary output of John Grisham. Grisham, for those unfamiliar, was a lawyer-turned-writer who authored many supra-best-selling legal thrillers throughout the 1990s, including "The Pelican Brief," "The Client," "The Chamber," "A Time to Kill," and "Runaway Jury." There was a time when no one at an airport was without a Grisham novel in hand. Most of Grisham's books were about a young, upstart lawyer, new to the profession, who uncovers a vast legal conspiracy. To date, Grisham has written about 50 novels and four non-fiction books, and many of his bigger hits have been adapted into equally successful films.

Pollock's "The Firm" was made for $42 million and starred Tom Cruise as Mitch McDeere, a recent law school graduate, who finds a money laundering and tax fraud scheme -- and possible violence -- connected to the firm where he takes a job. It boasted an impressive cast, including Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Hal Holbrook, Wilford Brimley, Gary Busey, and David Strathairn. Gene Hackman appeared as the character named Avery Tolar who served as Mitch's mentor at the titular Firm. "The Firm" grossed over $270 million. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $590 million today. It was the fifth highest-grossing film of that year, behind "Jurassic Park," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "The Fugitive," and "Schindler's List."

Hackman plays a sizeable role in "The Firm," but his name does not appear on the poster. From a publicity perspective, this was an odd choice. Why not sell the fact that an actor of Hackman's stature is in your film? It seems that Hackman's name was left off of "The Firm's" publicity materials due to some last-minute casting, and a somewhat messy contract tangle. The story was covered by a 1993 article in the Los Angeles Times.