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Which Quentin Tarantino movie has made the most money?

Fri 21 February 2025 18:53, UK

Quentin Tarantino’s work has had an enormous impact on the landscape of filmmaking and popular culture, with a devoted fan base who religiously study and follow each one of his projects.

After the explosive release of Pulp Fiction, the director quickly cemented himself as one of the most exciting new filmmakers in Hollywood, dividing critics through his stylised violence and rapid-paced dialogue but nonetheless causing curiosity and intrigue over his next move. After following Jackie Brown in 1997, he further expanded on his unique style but with a more mature palette, continuing this with the campy Kill Bill series in 2003.

Over the years, his work has evolved and also become a caricature of his own style, with Tarantino being all too familiar with the creative trademarks of his work and the speculation over whether he would continue nodding towards a certain brand of cigarettes or bare feet in his later projects.

His most recent films perhaps display this the most, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being a dazzling encapsulation of everything that defines his work, paying homage to the movies that made him fall in love with cinema and the madness of life in Los Angeles in 1969.

The film follows an ageing television star called Rick Dalton and his friendship with Cliff Booth, his stunt double. At the turn of the decade, both begin to reconcile with their fading fame and power in the industry, all while new directors like Roman Polanski are hot on the block and Sharon Tate is the talk of the town. Everyone is trying to cling onto and discover success, all happening in the same town during one pivotal year.

Despite being one of his most highly anticipated projects, it was by no means his most commercially successful, with the film deterring some audience members from watching due to the extensive run-time and unconventionally structured scenes, with one particular sequence going on for 17 minutes and being misunderstood by many audience members. To this day, Tarantino’s most commercially successful film was Django Unchained, which earned nearly $310million at the global box office.

Naturally, the film’s financial success didn’t make it immune from sparking controversy, as many of his films do. Perhaps this is what drew in a larger audience, with many film lovers criticising Tarantino’s use of racial slurs and derogatory language. Spike Lee was one of many to speak his mind against this language in the film, saying, “Slavery was not a spaghetti western”.

Has any Quentin Tarantino movie bombed at the box office?

While Tarantino’s fans are generally pretty reliable in driving revenue for his films, his 2007 film Death Proof was the least commercially successful in his entire body of work, and he considered it to be damaging to his confidence as a director.

The film had a budget of $30m and grossed $31m in total, earning a small profit on his revenge flick. However, in recent years, it has found a new audience and has taken on a new life despite the initially frosty reception of the film.