Entertainment
All 3 R-Rated Movies That Made $1 Billion, Ranked
Traditional thinking suggests giant blockbuster movies ought to be aimed at the widest audience possible, and this therefore would appear to take the restrictive-by-name R rating out of the equation. The MPA’s second-harshest certification has long been seen as a box-office hurdle in any context. Though plenty of R-rated films have seen runaway box-office success, it goes against conventional wisdom to assume many R-rated movies will be counted among the highest-grossing movies ever made.
In the modern era, the ultimate target for a blockbuster, the benchmark, is the billion-dollar mark. Only three R-rated movies have crossed it, beginning in 2019 with Todd Phillips‘ box-office wildfire Joker in 2019. Some R-rated movies have come awfully close to crossing the billion-dollar mark, like Deadpool 2 and Oppenheimer, but only these three have crossed the threshold. The following ranks every R-rated billion-dollar movie from worst to best. Surely, these movies prove that it sometimes pays to aim your movie specifically, confidently at a grown-up audience.
3
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ (2024)
No one can deny the buckets of money Deadpool & Wolverine made in the summer of 2024, and more power to you if you love this movie, but it’s hard to see the third Deadpool movie as much more than a lavishly-budgeted corporate merger with hindsight. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine has been one of the most perfect, fan-favorite presences in comic-book movies since the dawn of the 21st century, so, of course, fans were widely hyped to discover he’d be returning to the role in this context, and it was easy to predict Deadpool’s third outing would at minimum clear a billion following the snowballing box-office successes of the first two films.
Deadpool & Wolverine suffers from a lot of the problems that plagued the, admittedly, enormously successful, Deadpool and Deadpool 2. There are more references than actual, genuine, set-up and pay-off jokes, and the film is more zany and wild than genuinely funny. It really falls apart on repeat viewings once the jukebox cameos and surprises are known. Jackman and Ryan Reynolds do have comic chemistry, but the writing just isn’t all that remarkable. This was a theatrical event, to be sure. Enough of one to clear $1.39 billion worldwide, still, as of this writing, enough to make it the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever made. This is also perhaps the ultimate embodiment of Martin Scoresese’s controversial comments suggesting superhero movies were often more theme parks than cinema.
2
‘Joker’ (2019)
Joker‘s sheer profitability sets it apart from the other two movies on this list, grossing $1.08 billion against a budget that was likely under $70 million, a genuine “mid-budget” studio picture like we had far more of in the ’90s. This is a film where a great deal is lost outside of the theatrical experience, which goes a long way in explaining the box-office haul relative to the cultural cooling-off over the last seven years. Joaquin Phoenix gives it everything in the Oscar-winning lead performance, but Joker just isn’t that substantial or thematically deep a picture considering its ambitions of exploring mental illness. The cinematography and especially the score are gorgeous, which perhaps went a long way in masking that there just isn’t that much going on under the surface.
There are some movies—iconic movies, successful, once-adored movies—with sequels so bad and so hated they’ve tarnished the original and the brand over time. This era of Warner and D.C. gave us at least two examples, with the astonishingly bad Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020, and Joker: Folie à Deux a few years later. Todd Phillips’ musical follow-up to Joker is, and likely will forever remain, one of the most hated and most infamous box-office bombs in Hollywood history, losing an estimated $125-200 million for Warner Bros. thanks to an absolutely absurd $200 million budget that never should have been a thing. It’s important to note and respect that the original Joker truly struck a chord in a sincere and organic kind of way with many viewers. Also, the past seven years haven’t been great to it, and the damage the sequel did to its legacy is simply undeniable.
1
‘The Odyssey’ (2026)
Hey, remember a couple months ago, when this movie was “controversial?” Remember when some dark, best-ignored corners of the internet suggested The Odyssey would be Christopher Nolan‘s undoing because of a few casting choices? Cries of “woke” because of a few casting choices in this fantasy movie? Yeah, me neither. Maybe it’s time for the entertainment industry and its observers to repurpose a colloquialism previously reserved for James Cameron: Never bet against Christopher Nolan. The Oscar-winning director’s enormously-scaled adaptation of Homer’s epic poem is simply the best reason to go to a movie theater in 2026, maybe even in years. It’s important to mention that seeing the film in any format apart from the IMAX 70mm in which it was filmed is to get an incomplete experience, but this quasi-roadshow presentation is about as spectacular and immersive a cinema experience as you can ever hope for. There’s a reason it’s been sold out across the U.S. and international markets for months.
There are multiple, perhaps at least a half-dozen, set pieces from The Odyssey that are truly for the ages: the movie truly takes off and never lets up following the emergence of the Cyclops, the most terrifying movie scene of a landmark year for horror movies. The ambush of the Laestrygonians (giants) is also an all-timer, as is a final action set piece with a heart-pumping emotional payoff. The scene many point to as the highlight of the film is Samantha Morton as the sorceress, Circe. The technical aspects of The Odyssey have in many ways set the bar. This movie really is that impressive, but it’s important to mention that all the performances, perhaps especially Morton, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, and a career-best Matt Damon, are just as great. Rarely has a film this technically astonishing had such a strong emotional core. Every other movie that has also married these two aspects has also been a box-office leviathan.
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