‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Is Now the Highest-Grossing Romantic Comedy of the 2010s
The yearly domestic box-office chart from Box Office Mojo for 2018 is mostly a predictable list. Superheroes, more superheroes, animated superheroes, a few dinosaurs, more superheroes, Tom Cruise running really fast, Star Wars, and more superheroes. But tenth place on that list is currently held by an unexpected blockbuster: Crazy Rich Asians, the romantic comedy about the extremely glamorous adventures of one Asian family. Tonight (as observed by Gitesh Pandya), Crazy Rich Asians passes $170 million at the domestic box office. No other romantic comedy this year has done that — and no rom-com from 2016 or 2017 did it either.
There’s more. Here’s Box Office Mojo’s list of the the biggest romantic-comedies ever. Crazy Rich Asians is currently number six on the list, and the only film released in the 2010s among the top 10.
So Crazy Rich Asians is already the biggest romantic comedy of the decade. (The second-biggest romantic comedy of the 2010s is 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, which grossed $132 million and is currently the 13th biggest rom-com ever in the United States.) It probably won’t become the biggest romantic comedy of the century — because in order to do that it would have to also become the biggest romantic comedy ever by passing My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its $241 million lifetime domestic gross. Crazy Rich Asians could crack the top 5 all-time, but as it nears the end of its run in theaters another $70 million in ticket sales seems like a stretch.
Still, the title of the biggest romantic comedy of the year and the decade is nothing to sneeze at. And that’s before home video and streaming revenue — or a sequel, which is all but guaranteed after this staggering financial numbers.
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