10 Insane Movie Box-Office Records That Will Probably Never Be Broken

7. Highest Domestic Gross For An NC-17 Rated Film

showgirls movie
MGM-UA

Current Record Holder: Showgirls ($20,350,754)

You never really see any widely-released NC-17 rated films anymore. It's the rough equivalent of our own 18 certificate here in the UK, with the minor caveat that an NC-17 movie will rarely see a full theatrical release, and could even have some serious trouble attracting a distributor.

This is the biggest reason that Showgirls' record has stood firm since 1995. Its domestic gross of $20.3 million is by no means a ludicrously large figure, but the simple lack of competition makes that low bar seem a lot, lot higher than it actually is.

In fact, the most recent release that Box Office Mojo lists among the top NC-17 domestic grosses is Kindergarten Teacher, which released in 2015 and went on to make an astonishingly low $36,190.

Showgirls' nearest competition is Henry & June, a 1990 romantic drama starring Kevin Spacey and Uma Thurman - but even with those two stars attached, it only managed a paltry $11,567,449 domestically, over $8 million short of the record total.

The fact that the only film that came close to dethroning Showgirls released five years before it coupled with the meagre, less bankable amount of NC-17 movies that hit the theatrical market nowadays, should ensure that the movie's $20,350,754 haul keeps it atop the adult pile for some time.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!