20 Movies Way More Successful Than Anyone Expected
2. Fahrenheit 9/11
Even accepting that pop documentaries like Bowling for Columbine and Super Size Me could still perform well at the box office in the early 2000s, it's truly bewildering that Michael Moore's Iraq War documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed $222.4 million on a mere $6 million budget.
Just try and imagine a documentary in 2025 grossing even 10% of that figure, because with streamers largely cornering the market on documentary distribution nowadays, it just isn't something most folk are prepared to leave the house for anymore, especially post-pandemic.
But Fahrenheit 9/11's performance is still a massive outlier even for the time - a testament to the tense political climate of the period in the lead up to the U.S. Presidential election.
George W. Bush's presidency was such a global spectacle - even for the standards of American presidents - that the documentary crossed over into mainstream appeal worldwide, surely aided by Moore's own celebrity as a documentarian and the film's cuttingly humourous tone.
Yet it goes without saying that cinema will probably never see a politically-themed documentary - or documentary period, really - have this kind of box office juice ever again.
Case in point, even Moore's own 2018 docu-sequel, Fahrenheit 11/9, grossed just $6.7 million.