Looking at the run for Need for Speed in China made me want to document this - films made primarily in the U.S. that end up making more money in a single international market than in the U.S. It's something that use to be pretty rare, but with China gaining strength it seems like something that's going to start happening more and more often. For now, I'll just sort this by country, with the film's gross in that country and the approximate percentage gain that is over the film's US gross.

This is very much a work-in-progress, so if you can think of any others just mention them.

(Note: for borderline cases like most of the UK entries I'm consulting IMDB, and if they have the US listed as one of the main countries, then it counts - hence how I'm listing the heavily British Johnny English Reborn and not the also heavily British Mr Bean's Holiday; it's also why I'm including Letters from Iwo Jima, a film made in Japanese but still a film largely financed and worked on creatively by Americans).

AUSTRALIA
Death at a Funeral (2007) - $14.7 million (+71%)
Johnny English Reborn (2011) - $13.4 million (+62%)


CHINA
Furious 7 (2015) - $390.9 million (+11%)
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) - $301 million (+23%)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) - $154.3 million (+8%)
Titanic 3D (2012) - $145 million (+151%)
Terminator: Genisys (2015) - $113.2 million (+26%)
Pacific Rim (2013) - $111.9 million (+9%)
The Expendables 3 (2014) - $72.9 million (+85%)
Need for Speed (2014) - $66.2 million (+55%)
Jurassic Park 3D (2013) - $55.9 million (+23%)
Escape Plan (2013) - $40.9 million (+63%)
Point Break (2015) - $39.4 million (+37%)
Gods of Egypt (2016) - $35.6 million (+14%)
Brick Mansions (2014) - $29.8 million (+46%)
Cloud Atlas (2012) - $27.7 million (+2%)
Seventh Son (2015) - $27.6 million (+60%)
The Last Witch Hunter (2016) - $27.4 million (+0%)
The Walk (2016) - $13.8 million (+36%)

FRANCE
Oceans (2010) - $23.9 million (+23%)

GERMANY
Johnny English Reborn (2011) - $14.2 million (+71%)


JAPAN
The Last Samurai (2003) - $119.3 million (+7%)
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) - $48.3 million (+14%)
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) - $42.9 million (+212%)
Oceans (2010) - $25.5 million (+32%)
The Three Musketeers (2011) - $24.4 million (+19%)
Marie Antoinette (2006) - $17.6 million (+10%)


UNITED KINGDOM
The Full Monty (1997) - $84.6 million (+84%)
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) - $68.2 million (+70%)
Love Actually (2003) - $62.7 million (+5%)
Wallace and Gromit in: THe Curse of the Wererabbit (2005) - $56.8 million (+1%)
Hot Fuzz (2007) - $41.2 million (+75%)
Johnny English Reborn (2011) - $33.1 million (+299%)
Johnny English (2003) - $31.4 million (+11%)

One fascinating borderline case I wish I could include: Marie Antoinette made only $227,000 less in Japan ($15.735 million) than it did in the U.S. ($15.962 million). How odd.

It earned more in Japan than that.

It grossed ¥2.10 billion ($17.62 million) and BOM stopped tracking it at about ¥1.91 billion ($15.7 million) coming off a ¥45 million ($365,000) sixth-weekend. BOM's tracking for pretty much every film ends before the film is out of release (usually when it falls out of the Top 10/15).

A few recent Woody Allen movies fall into this category. Consider Cassandra's Dream in Italy or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger in France.

Another film is Intruders in Spain.

Oceans also earned more in Japan than in the US ($25.54 million vs. $19.42 million). Oceans grossed closer to $27 million, though.

Cool! In that case I will add it, along with Oceans (which made more in France than in the U.S., oddly enough). Do you also have the Japan numbers for A.I.? I seem to remember that being a film that outgrossed its domestic take, but I can't find the numbers anywhere.

I'm also trying to decide on a cutoff for listing films, so that I'm not including every US-funded film that was dumped in the US while being given a stronger overseas release (like the Woody Allen films David mentioned). Should the cutoff be for domestic gross (say, it needs to have made at least $5 million) or for the individual countries (say, it needs to have made at least $10 million in the individual country)?

The 2007 Death At A Funeral was the hilarious British original (albeit directed by American Frank Oz).

The unnecessary American remake came out three years later.

A.I. earned ¥9.70 billion (#30 All-Time), but there's no exact dollar figure. However, if you use the avg. exchange rate during its first 4 months in release (with more emphasis during July/August first month in release + holidays), it would have grossed about $80.2 million.

So it's pretty close, and more than likely beat the US. It would have needed to be pretty frontloaded, over 50% of its total earned in July when the yen was strongest during its release, to fall below the US's $78.6 million total. And it was in the Top 10 for 12 weeks, so that doesn't look likely.

Would you consider "About Time"? I love that movie so I looked it up, and was wrong, it's not the UK that earned more than the US, but South Korea...

Also, Wallace & Gromit, by $700k, but that might not make your cutoff. It is Aardman and they're British.

Its a great list. I'll look-up for a few soon.

Great thread, but lol at the above quote.

You could have just stretched it to "Films made in another country than their top performing market".

[quote

Over the Top made $16,057,580 in the US, and made $18,252,446 in Japan after 66 days.

D-Tox made $79,161 in the US, and almost every other internatonal market beat it, the best being Mexico, with $1,126,076.

Why is Johnny English on so many lists, isn't there only one #1 market for a film? I think you should sub categorize those. May get confusing. Great thread idea. If you're going to use a lot of English films though, might as well include Perfume on the list. That was huge everywhere but US


Mr. Bean's holiday- UK- 44 million
China might be for Transcendence, it opened to over 10 million there.

In the case of Perfume, I thought we said that films which were dumped in the States don't count. (And it wasn't British, it was German.)

Perfume died in platform release in the U.S.; DreamWorks never expanded it to more than 280 theaters. On the other hand, Constantin did an excellent job selling the film in non-North American markets (same thing happened with The Three Musketeers, though at least that got a wide release in the U.S.).

It was an English film no less than Mr. Bean, just happened to be filmed in Germany.

In Bruges made more in the UK than US as well. Boy and the Striped Pajamas, Run Fat Boy Run, RockNRolla, etc

That's, umm, not true, like, at all. It's an American film.

Waterworld?

Updated the first post to include TF4 and Brick Mansions (!) in China.

Over 203 Million WW for Need For Speed. They could probably make a sequel off that.

Although the runs have not finished, this could be added:

The Expendables 3 (2014) - $61.9 million (+61%)

South Korea:

BEGIN AGAIN ($18.6m & counting vs. $16.1m domestic)

and last year

ABOUT TIME ($23.4m vs. $15.3m)

CHINA

The Expendables 3 (2014) - $70 million vs. $39m domestic

You can probably add Grace of Monaco in the Japan column soon unless it manages a US release (if that still counts )