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

5. Longest Time To Reach Number One

A Fish Called Wanda
United International Pictures

Current Record Holder: A Fish Called Wanda (10 Weeks)

A Fish Called Wanda released on July 15, 1988, but it wasn't until September 16, 1988 - on its tenth weekend - that it actually took the number one spot at the domestic box-office. Crazy.

To be fair, in those ten weeks it was up against the likes of Die Hard, Big and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so the competition was tough - and even when it did hit number one, it only just squeezed past John McClane's first adventure with a mere $10,805 advantage.

Still, the producers of A Fish Called Wanda are probably glad that the film took so long to hit that coveted number one; this is an absolutely unprecedented, unheard of achievement, and one that's held strong for almost thirty years without being threatened in the slightest.

As we mentioned with the last entry, there are so many major releases nowadays - spread from the beginning of February right until the annual Star Wars offering in mid-December - that it's unlikely a film would be able to have an average opening, only to assume the top spot ten or more weeks later.

There will almost certainly be a Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Pixar, or other major release in the way, a film that will halt any kind of resurgence that would be big enough to top this record.

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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!