American Pie Collection

American Pie is a series of sex comedy films. The first film in the series was released in 1999, by Universal Pictures, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, cult following amongst young people. The second and third films were released at two-year intervals, whereas the fourth came nearly a decade later.

The script moved unusually fast from idea to production. Adam Herz, an unknown production assistant at the time, started writing it while on a skiing trip in early 1998; Universal bought it after a bidding war for $750,000, and the film was shooting just six months later. One detail worth knowing: the pie scene the title half-depends on wasn't even in the draft Universal bought — Herz has confirmed directly that it was added later in development. Chris and Paul Weitz co-directed it as their feature debut, though only Paul received formal directing credit.

Herz has explained the title's double meaning himself: it borrows directly from Don McLean's 1971 folk song, and separately plays on the idea that losing your virginity in high school is "as American as apple pie." Whatever the reasoning, it worked commercially in a way nobody could have predicted from an $11 million film — it brought in over $235 million worldwide, and across the full franchise, theatrical films and direct-to-video spinoffs combined, the series has pulled in something like a billion dollars total. The theatrical side ended at four, by the cast's own account rather than any larger plan: Seann William Scott has said directly that American Reunion's box office in 2012 likely wasn't strong enough to justify a fifth.