6/13/2023 0 Comments Wayne lonesome dubplate![]() ![]() My Big Fat Greek Wedding benefited from something that no movie studio, big or small, can buy or control: word of mouth. This little indie had become a titan in the world of romantic comedies, and it's remained in that position for 20 years. Not only that, but it was handily the highest-grossing romantic comedy in history and the first entry in the genre to crack the $200 million mark in North America (without adjusting for inflation). Made for just $5 million, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a mammoth success. ![]() Once the dust had settled and IFC had finally pulled this feature from theaters, Wedding had taken in $241.4 million in North America alone. By the time Christmas 2002 rolled around, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was still playing in over 950 theaters and had exceeded $200 million domestically.īy February 2003, My Big Fat Greek Wedding finally exited wide release and fell to 533 theaters, capping a staggering six-month run in nationwide release. This wasn’t the end of Wedding’s story, though, as it kept on playing steadily for months and months on end, including three consecutive weekends that each accumulated $10+ million in August and September 2002. My Big Fat Greek Wedding kept on chugging and chugging in theaters before finally entering wide release for the very first time in its 16th weekend of release after grossing just north of $37 million domestically. This thing was turning into a mainstream smash. This sudden increase was the first sign that Wedding was not performing like a normal arthouse title. As limited releases expand to more locations, their per-theater average gross is supposed to go down. Wedding increased by 33 theaters and yet made more in both its total weekend gross and in its per-theater average haul. ![]() Then, in its second weekend, a funny thing happened. That was a perfectly acceptable opening, but it didn’t immediately signify that a pop culture event had arrived. On opening weekend, My Big Fat Greek Wedding grossed $597,362 at 108 theaters for a $5,531 per-theater average. Before its release, expectations were low that this romantic comedy, which lacked movie stars or any major marketing, would make an impression financially. ![]() This was not a company known for launching hits even by the generous standards of what constitutes a crossover arthouse box office success story. Only a handful of films released by IFC Films have ever cracked the $5 million mark domestically, with the studio, even in the early 2000s, mostly being known for handling extremely obscure arthouse fare. An original romantic comedy produced by Tom Hanks, the feature was financed independently and released by specialty distributor IFC Films. My Big Fat Greek Wedding opened in theaters in April 2002. Given that, it’s incredibly doubtful any new movies will be beating out My Big Fat Greek Wedding for the title of rom-com box-office champion any time soon. Hollywood isn’t very interested in producing any new entries in this genre for the big screen. Case in point: the record for the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time, domestically. Most of these are records specific to a single genre of filmmaking that may not be as ubiquitous in the modern mainstream movie scene. However, there are a handful of box office records that don’t seem to be getting broken anytime soon. Thanks to the presence of inflation and constantly increasing pressure to see movies on opening weekend, many box office records, especially ones pertaining to a film’s first few days of release, are always on the cusp of getting dethroned. Given how often months like July and November are dominated by the biggest movies of a given year, the opening weekend records of those months are always in danger of getting shattered. Eventually, some other movie will beat out the gargantuan domestic opening weekend record of Avengers: Endgame, just as Spider-Man’s hold on that record inevitably came to a close. Some box office records seem destined to always get dethroned. ![]()
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