Thursday, August 27, 2009

Sports & The Box Office

Writing about Clint Eastwood's rugby movie, got me thinking about sports movies.

You know it's a bad sign for sports movie and the box office is the highest grossing sports movie stars Adam Sandler.

Yes - that's right, it's The Waterboy.

In fact we associates sports films as "popular" but I think sports films tend to have loyal supporters who buy the DVD and watch the film on TV over and over again, because it's certainly not about the box office.

Here's a list of all sports movies that have grossed over 100 million at the box office.

1. The Waterboy (1998) $161 million
2. The Longest Yard (2005) $158 million
3. Jerry Maguire (1996) $153 million
4. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) $148 million
5. Rocky IV (1985) $127 million
6. Rocky III (1982) $125 million
7. Seabiscuit (2003) $120 million
8. Blades of Glory (2007) $118 million
9. Rocky (1976) $117 million
10. Remember the Titans (2000) $115 million
11. DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004) $114 million
12. A League of Their Own (1992) $107 million
13. Million Dollar Baby (2004) $100 million

It's certainly surprising to only see 13 films, and there are certainly films that I'm surprised don't make the cut.

For those keeping score at home, that's 4 Boxing Movies, 4 football movies, 1 Baseball movie, 1 horse racing film, and incidentally 1 figure skating movie, a dodgeball movie, and race car movie...if those count.

Notice there is no golf, soccer, or hockey films.

And certainly no rugby films.

(Although Clint Eastwood has produced one of the 100 million dollar sports films, and there certainly isn't a precedent for rugby films, so we'll just have to see if Invictus joins this list.)

4 comments:

Jacob said...

Wow, very surprising. And I am not a fan of The Waterboy. I do believe like Jerry Maguire is a good one and not on the list like Tin Cup and Field of Dreams, or semi sports movie The Color of Money (about pool). I am definitely a sports movie fan and a Clint Eastwood fan, not a rugby fan but I'm sure I will still check it out.

Jacob said...

Also you had one mistake. The #2 movie should be The Longest Yard, not The longest Year. Just and fyi. And I didn't like that one either.

RC said...

@ jacob - thanks on the Longest Yard typo.

I think Field of Dreams for me is the biggest suprise to me too...

But Tin Cup is only $53 million, and Fieldo of Dreams is $64 million.

Andrew K. said...

Is The Hustler a sports movie? If it is that's my favourite. I like Jerry Maguire but I still don't see it as a sports flick.