$200 Million International Box Office Hits That Did It With the Least Amount of Help From America
By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Seriously Random Lists | Comments (32)
In the history of cinema, there have been 416 films that have made $200 million or more (not adjusted for inflation) worldwide. Thirty-six of those movies managed to make over $200 million without a lot of help, percentage-wise, from the United States. That is to say, less than 30 percent of the overall gross of those 36 films came from domestic audiences. I don’t know why this is fascinating to me, but it is. Maybe it is to you, too. I like box office numbers. Like this fun fact: Did you know that the Brad Pitt movie Troy, which was considered a huge failure in the United States, actually made nearly $500 million worldwide? It’s true. Also, though Avatar is the biggest grossing movie of all time in America (and overseas), it only received about 28 percent of its $2.7 billion box office from America.
Overall, however, I have to concede that most of the movies —- save for two Ice Age movies and Die Hard With a Vengeance — weren’t much of a surprise to me. And I knew Hayao Miyazaki was huge internationally, but I didn’t really realize how huge he is worldwide relative to the United States. But I guess my favorite title on this list of 36 films is the first one, a movie that managed to make $245 million worldwide without even being released in America. In fact, I’ve never even heard of it.
Here are the 36 films, of all time, that have made $200 million or more internationally with less than 30 percent of that gross coming from the US (U.S. box-office totals in parenthesis). And after the $3.8 million that Knight and Day put up on Wednesday, if that movie expects to eke out a profit, it’s going to need a lot of international help. Fortunately for Cruise, international audiences have been kinder to him than we have.
1. Welcome to the Sticks — $245 million ($0)
2. Howl’s Moving Castle — $235 million ($4.7 million)
3. Spirited Away — $274 million ($10 million)
4. Ponyo — $200 million ($15 million)
5. Mr. Bean’s Holiday — $229 million ($33 million)
6. Bean — $251 million ($45 million)
7. Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason $262 million ($40 million)
8. The Full Monty — $257 million ($46 million)
9. Australia — $211 ($49 million)
10. King Arthur — $203 million ($51 million)
11. Four Weddings and a Funeral — $245 million ($52 million)
12. Life is Beautiful — $229 million ($57 million)
13. Love, Actually — $246 million ($59 million)
14. Babe — $254 million ($63 million)
15. The Fifth Element — $263 ($63 million)
16. Dirty Dancing — $214 million ($64 million)
17. The Golden Compass — $372 million ($70 million)
18. Michael Jackson’s This Is It — $260 million ($72 million)
19. Bridget Jones’ Diary — $289 million ($71 million)
20. Prince of Persia — $295 million ($82 million)
21. Schindler’s List — $321 million ($96 million)
22. Die Hard With a Vengeance — $366 million ($100 million)
23. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor — $401 million ($102 million)
24. The Last Samurai — $456 million ($111 million)
25. Angels and Demons — $485 million ($133 million)
26. Troy — $497 million ($133 million)
27. Mamma Mia — $609 ($144 million)
28. 2012 — $769 million ($166 million)
29. Casino Royale — $594 ($167 million)
30. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa — $603 million ($180 million)
31. Quantum of Solace — $586 million ($186 million)
32. Ice Age: Meltdown — $655 million ($195 million)
33. Ice Age: Age of the Dinosaurs — $886 ($196 million)
34. The Da Vinci Code — $758 million ($217 million)
35. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — $868 million ($262 million)
36. Avatar — $2.7 billion ($750 million)
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Comments
Posted by: Fredo at June 25, 2010 11:38 AM
I've seen 22 of those movies. And I'm not surprised.
This list doesn't include any foreign language movies. I wonder how many non-English movies have reached that benchmark.