Last year, reports appeared in the media and on social networks that Stallone had set an unusual record: films with his participation became box office leaders for six decades in a row. We decided to check if there was an actor who had set such a record before.
In August 2021, Russian and foreign websites began writing about this news, and then it spread across social networks. Posts and news items about how the Rocky and Rambo actor became the first actor to have his films top the box office charts for six consecutive decades can be found on DTF, "Afisha", "Kanobu" And "Peekaboo". On VKontakte, posts about the record collected tens of thousands of views (examples here And here). The achievement is also mentioned on Stallone's page. "Wikipedia".
On some resources, the authors did not understand what was being discussed and wrote about something else. For example, in the headline on the website wi-fi.ru Stallone called "the highest grossing actor in the history of cinema." The text says the following: “For 60 years, he became the most profitable actor, number one at the box office. Records were broken by 20 of the 46 films with his participation.” On the PopcornNews website too reportedthat the actor became the highest-grossing actor “after 60 years of career,” and in the publication “Interesting Facts” told, that films with Stallone ranked first “in terms of number of views.”
The primary source of the news was the Deadline Hollywood website, one of the most authoritative and well-known resources about cinema. August 12, 2021 Film Editor-in-Chief Mike Fleming Jr. published there is an exclusive article with the headline “Sylvester Stallone has knocked out his box office rivals for six decades in a row with his films.” Below is our full translation of the text.
After Suicide Squad: Mission Beast climbed the box office charts last weekend, I did the math. Sylvester Stallone accomplished something that many leading actors cannot boast of. Now Stallone, who played King Shark in director James Gunn's film, has appeared in the number one box office films for six straight decades. During this time, 46 films were released with Stallone, and 20 of them took first place in the charts. Listed below are some films spanning six decades.
Here's how the decades in Stallone's filmography are represented:
- 1970s: "Rocky" (1976);
- 1980s: "Rocky 3" (1982), "Rambo: First Blood" (1982);
- 1990s: "Climber" (1993);
- 2000s: "Racer" (2001);
- 2010s: "The Expendables" (2010);
- 2020s: "Suicide Squad: Mission Blowout" (2021).
Stallone himself was very happy about this achievement on his social networks. He posted a screenshot of the Deadline article and thanked James Gunn, in whose film he voiced the talking anthropomorphic shark Nanaue. And on the set the role of the character performed actor Steve Agee, who also played John Economos in the same film.
The whole point of the achievement was that in every decade, from the 1970s to the 2020s, there was a Stallone movie that topped the box office charts for the weekend. Moreover, the conversation, apparently, was only about North American box office (Canada and USA). As you can see, there is no mention in the text of either the record, or the fact that Stallone was the first to achieve such a box office result, or any mention of profitability or number of views. Reputable English-language media mostly retold this news without mentioning the records.
We checked Deadline's list, and all of the projects mentioned were indeed ranked number one. The reputable Box Office Mojo collections database site was used for verification. Since box office reports in their modern form appeared towards the late 1970s and early 1980s, we used Variety magazine's weekly roundups to check older pictures.
We also note that in the filmography of Sly, as Stallone is often called, there are also films that performed poorly at the box office (for example, “Racer”). This also applies to some of the twenty who became number one. So many films do not have any records as claimed on some sites. And Stallone’s film career is not 60 years old; it began a little over 50 years ago. Also "Suicide Squad: Mission Bang" in its first US opening weekend collected just over $26 million, and over $70 million at that time was all over the world. But all this concerns only minor errors of the Russian-language publications mentioned above.
Now to the main question: was there an actor with a similar achievement before Sly? IN comments Under the Deadline article, they remembered Harrison Ford, but in the context that he will soon only repeat Stallone’s achievement. In the 1960s, films starring Ford failed to become box office leaders, and The Call of the Wild (2020) did very little left to first place in the top, but he never rose above second line. However, for 2023 planned release of the fifth part of the Indiana Jones film series, which, according to forecasts, can become very successful at the box office. By the way, Ford was also mentioned in some Russian-language publications.
We also checked the filmography of Dustin Hoffman, also mentioned in the comments. And this actor fits the bill on all counts, only he achieved Stallone’s results back in the 2010s. Below are examples of Hoffman's No. 1 box office weekend films in each decade (we've added a couple of animated films since Stallone also voiced King Shark):
- 1960s: "Graduate" (1967), "Midnight Cowboy" (1969);
- 1970s: "All the President's Men" (1976);
- 1980s: "Tootsie" (1982), "Rain Man" (1988);
- 1990s: "Dick Tracy" (1990), "Captain Hook" (1991), "Epidemic" (1995);
- 2000s: "Meet the Fockers" (2004), "Lemony Snicket: 33 Misfortunes" (2004), "Kung Fu Panda" (2008);
- 2010s: "Meet the Fockers - 2" (2010), "Kung Fu Panda 3" (2016).
Cover photo: still from the movie "Rocky 4"
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- The fictional world of geek publics
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