What is the best-selling R-rated movie in home video history?
Back in the day, DVD sales were a reliable form of income for people who made movies.
After a film completed its theatrical run, audiences would sometimes need to wait years before they could watch it again, with no streaming platforms in sight, which meant you could revisit your favourite scenes in a matter of weeks. If you truly loved something, you would perhaps see it multiple times in the cinema, making up for the time you’d have to wait before getting your hands on a copy.
Patience was integral to the act of film watching, with audiences flocking to video stores to finally have the luxury of being able to watch something they loved whenever they wanted. It could be an intricate courtroom drama that demands more than one watch, or it could be a sci-fi epic with images that need to be pored over with a microscope.
But while it used to be an activity to visit Blockbuster or HMV and pick out DVDs for your personal collection, it is sadly a lost art now, with streaming services rendering physical media almost entirely obsolete (besides for the resurgence in vinyl that is doing all the heavy lifting).
Particularly in regards to actors and filmmakers, the flailing state of physical media has had a knock-on effect on the business, with producers formerly relying on sales from DVDs to recoup a significant chunk of their expenses and also provide additional cheques to those who starred in the project. This was certainly the case with one film from the 2000s that obliterated all records and became the bestselling R-rated movie in home movie history, something that might not be surprising to those who have watched the film.
What is the bestselling R-rated movie in home video history?
Todd Philips has a career that almost appears to make no sense from the outside, with a collection. Of stories that flit between super dark villain origin stories to crude comedies. While we might now know him from the colossal success of Joker, for which Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for ‘Best Actor’, before this project, he had nothing but comedies to his name.
From the likes of War Dogs to Starksky and Hutch, he perhaps didn’t seem like the obvious choice for an arthouse superhero movie with one of the world’s greatest actors. However, perhaps the studio heads at Marvel were basing their decision on the box office success of one of his most commercially successful films, The Hangover.
Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, the film follows three friends suffering the worst hangover of their lives and trying to find their friend who has gone missing before his wedding. It was one of the most popular films of the decade, with countless audience members quoting each moment from the film and the ridiculous antics of the central trio.
While it might have been a huge comedic pillar within popular culture of the 2000s, it was also huge for other reasons. The film broke records and became the bestselling R-rated movie in home video history, earning $187,822,730 from DVD sales and $55,752,028 from Blu-ray sales. Despite feeling like a blast from the past, it’s an impressive feat that still holds up today, with the streak of comedy films from this decade sticking out as one of the best of all time.
