Boxoffice - February 2017

FAHRENHEIT 9/11
Documentaries, almost as a rule, do not
make huge profits, but even some of the
most loved and (seemingly) most watched
documentaries of this century were middling
performers at the cinema: 2003’s Spellbound
made $5.7 million, 2013’s 20 Feet From Stardom
made $4.9 million, and 2012’s Searching
for Sugar Man made $3.6 million.
Fahrenheit revolutionized the entire genre’s
box office potential with its $119.1 million
total, or about $165.2 million adjusted for
inflation. Its opening gross alone of $23.9
million ($33.1 million adjusted) exceeded
the entire sum of director Michael Moore’s
previous highest performing film, 2002’s
Bowling for Columbine—a film that had been
considered a huge financial success by documentary
standards.
Audiences flocked to Fahrenheit’s relevant
and controversial political message, wanting
to see what the water-cooler crowd was
talking about before the election instead of
waiting for the DVD release. To this day it
remains by far the highest-grossing documentary
of all time, earning tens of millions above
the second-place nature documentary, 2005’s
March of the Penguins (which itself could be a
contender for inclusion in this article).
BRIDESMAIDS
Female-centric Hollywood films, especially
comedies, were a rare sight indeed back in
May 2011. On paper, Bridesmaids seemed an
unlikely candidate to break that mold.
The three leads were Kristen Wiig, Maya
Rudolph—arguably two of the less famous
Saturday Night Live cast members of the
2000s and 2010s, at least prior to the film’s
release—and an at-the-time virtually unknown
Melissa McCarthy. All the leads were
40-ish women, and the title seemed to tell
men they wouldn’t be interested. And like the
aforementioned Deadpool, it was rated R and
going up that month against the expensive
PG-13 blockbusters Thor and Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
It opened in second place but then
dropped only 20.4 percent in its second
weekend, then 20.7 percent in its third, then
27.3 percent in its fourth, and then 16.4
percent in its fifth on terrific word of mouth.
In fact, cinemas accommodated the demand
by playing it in more theaters nationwide on
its second, third, and even its fourth weekend
than it played in upon its debut. That’s
essentially unheard of for a film that begins in
wide release.
The movie ended with $169.1 million in
total, earning improbable Oscar nominations
for Best Supporting Actress and Original
Screenplay. (Oscar almost always nominates
late-year dramas instead of summer comedies.)
More broadly, it spawned the big
rise in R-rated female-driven comedies this
decade, one of the most unpredicted—and
most lucrative—Hollywood trends of the
2010s. In the five years since Bridesmaids, The
Heat made $159.5 million, Bad Moms made
$113.2 million, Spy made $110.8 million,
and Trainwreck made $110.2 million. It’s
questionable whether any of those would
have been greenlit by the financially
conscious studios if not for the box office
success of Bridesmaids. n
FEBRUARY 2017 BoxOffice ® 47