10 Highest Grossing Movies That STILL Surprise Us
These movies came and went despite grossing a pretty penny.
Folks love to complain that streaming movies are released and then instantly forgotten, but they're hardly the only game in town with that problem.
Though most lavish, big-screen theatrical releases have a hefty marketing push behind them, it's simply impossible for everything to be a commercial success. But what about those films that actually printed money at the box office, and yet, were almost instantly forgotten? Hell, perhaps you never even heard about them in the first place.
That's absolutely true of the following ten films, each of which made many hundreds of millions of dollars but, despite being watched by millions theatrically, fell off the face of the Earth in record time.
From international box office smash hits which have made little impact elsewhere, to blockbusters you've inexplicably never heard of, generic animated films, and everything else in-between, these movies came and went despite all the money they managed to make.
The lesson here? Box office isn't everything, and there's something to be said for a film that's actually still talked about months or even years after release...
10. Ne Zha 2
Let's kick things off with the most recent film on this list - a movie that, despite having made zero cultural imprint in the West, is currently the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.
Ne Zha 2 is a Chinese animated fantasy sequel, whose predecessor grossed an impressive $742.7 million worldwide back in 2019. And while China's booming cinema market made it likely that Ne Zha 2 would perform even better, did anyone anticipate it to gross over $2 billion, blowing past both Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the process?
It's all the more impressive given that more than 98% of the film's grosses have been from the Chinese market alone, and yet, unless you're a keen follower of the global box office, there's a good chance you've never even heard of Ne Zha 2.
Again, it speaks to not only the film's quality and status as a pop-culture phenomenon, but also China's growing influence in the film industry.
All the same, considering that Ne Zha 2 is the only non-Hollywood production in the top 50 highest-grossing movies of all time, its performance defies any sort of straight-forward categorisation.