What Used to Be the Biggest Denzel Washington Movie in History?

Shockingly, for the first time in history this weekend, a movie star of Denzel Washington’s caliber had a movie opening to $50+ million in North America. Typically, Washington has anchored adult-skewing movies that make more money over longer periods of times than, say, a typical superhero or young-adult movie on opening weekend; a film like Remember the Titans can open to $20.9 million and still go on to gross $115.7 million domestically, over a longer window of time. Gladiator II’s estimated domestic bow of $55.5 million did the trick of finally giving Washington a domestic opening weekend as massive as the actor’s sterling reputation.

Gladiator II will have no trouble becoming the biggest movie ever in Washington’s impressive career (after ten days of global showings, it’s already his second-biggest movie ever). That means it’ll dethrone a motion picture that’s held the record for the biggest Washington movie ever for a little over 17 years (and also, like Gladiator II, debuted in November): that honor has belonged not to Training Day nor Remember the Titans, but American Gangster, since the year 2007.

How Much Money Did American Gangster Make?

Released to theaters on November 2, 2007, American Gangster competed with future meme factory Bee Movie for the hearts and wallets of domestic moviegoers over that fateful frame. Audiences chose gangsters over honey in this particular instance, as Gangster topped the domestic box office on its opening weekend. It debuted to a fantastic $43.5 million and eventually scored a $130.1 million domestic haul. Worldwide, it became Washington’s first title to exceed $200 million worldwide with a $267.9 million global take.

American Gangster had a lot going for it fueling its box office success. For one thing, crime stories are always popular, especially when audiences get to root for the criminal, as was the case with Gangster’s marketing. Such stories tend to resonate everywhere on the planet, making American Gangster extra accessible to global moviegoers. As a cherry on top, the title united Gladiator artists Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott for a new movie. The previous year’s A Good Year proved that putting Crowe and Scott together could just as easily produce a box office bomb as it could a smash hit like Gladiator.

However, Gangster was an action-heavy feature that didn’t beg audiences to get invested in Crowe romping around A Good Year’s French countryside backdrop. Crowe was wielding a gun in Gangster’s posters and contending with Washington, in this Virtuosity reunion. That was a much more enticing prospect for moviegoers than other Crowe/Scott collaborations. However, American Gangster’s box office success largely stemmed from Washington’s involvement, no question about it.

American Gangster built on other mid-2000s movies like Man on Fire and Deja Vu that wrung moviegoing dollars out of the prospect of seeing respectable dramatic actor Denzel Washington lending his gravitas to action/thrillers. Gangster took that concept to its next level of box office success by further combining Washington with a famous historical figure (Frank Lucas) and promising he’d deliver lots of carnage on-screen. A Box Office Mojo news report over American Gangster’s opening weekend also astutely observed that the film’s marketing echoing beloved crime movie Scarface (especially in its poster) and drawing in more than half of its audience from women moviegoers further helped this motion picture reach exciting new box office heights for a Denzel Washington star vehicle.

What Was American Gangster’s Long-Term Influence?

After Gangster, Scott and Crowe would reunite two more times in the immediate future: 2008’s Body of Lies and 2010’s Robin Hood. Washington, meanwhile, further explored the action/suspense thriller genres with subsequent titles like 2010’s masterpiece Unstoppable. Working with Scott on this 2007 production led to the duo reuniting on Gladiator II, a casting that 2024 sequel leaned heavily on in its promotional campaign. American Gangster became a pop-culture phenomenon, inspiring a tie-in concept album of the same name from rapper Jay-Z, which debut at no. 1 on Billboard charts and went certified platinum in just a month – cementing the film’s cultural legacy sonically, as well as cinematically.

It’s also worth noting that Washington’s average international box office performance improved after Gangster. Of the 12 other Washington movies that grossed $80+ million overseas, seven would emerge after Gangster’s release. The same could not be said for the gangster/crime drama movie, though. The genre experienced a 2000s renaissance spurred on by The Departed and American Gangster. Titles like RockNRolla and Public Enemies flooded theaters at the end of the decade. By the 2010s, though, the genre was confined to largely box office flops like Gangster Squad and Live By Night.

Unless you had “John Wick” in your title, a gangster movie just wasn’t going to do big business in theaters. Hollywood shifting away from mid-budget adult-skewing movies in the 2010s further diluted the genre’s ubiquity. Thus, American Gangster, in hindsight, was a bit of a box office swan song for the genre (though a handful of other titles, like The Town, would make money afterward). The curtain call for this domain, though, also doubled as Denzel Washington’s finest box office hour. Only with Gladiator II 17 years later has another Washington movie finally toppled its global box office haul…