15 Years Ago, Leonardo DiCaprio Shattered His Own Box Office Records

Because Leonardo DiCaprio has avoided headlining conventional blockbuster tentpoles and franchise IPs, he hasn’t had a massive $300+ million domestic performer on par with, say, a typical Star Wars or Jurassic Park movie (save for Titanic, of course). However, that reality just makes DiCaprio’s box office success stories all the more impressive. DiCaprio’s star power proved essential to turning adult dramas like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Revenant into global box office hits. Heck, could any other leading man have gotten a movie as bleak as Killers of the Flower Moon to a $23 million North American bow?

Back in February 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio shattered his own box office records with his biggest domestic opening weekend up to that point. That impressive feat came about because of the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island. Even though a drastic release date push initially made it seem like Shutter Island was headed for box office disaster, DiCaprio reaffirmed his financial viability with the film’s extraordinary record-shattering run.

What Records Did Shutter Island Break?

15 years ago, DiCaprio’s biggest domestic opening was the $30.08 million debut of Catch Me If You Can in 2002, followed by Titanic’s $28.63 million. Those were solid bows – especially impressive given that they preceded extremely leggy runs in North America. However, DiCaprio, at the time, had never had a movie debut to $31 million or more. That all changed with Shutter Island, which launched to $41.06 million. That tremendous figure was the first time a DiCaprio star vehicle had debuted to over $40 million and signaled that this man had really come into his own as a box office draw.

Shutter Island shattering DiCaprio’s opening weekend box office record was especially impressive given that the film was helmed by Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest and most important filmmakers to ever walk the Earth. Scorsese’s movies have not often doubled as box office success stories: Taxi Driver and Goodfellas had solid box office runs, but other Scorsese movies like The Last Temptation of Christ and The King of Comedy were outright box office bombs. Scorsese’s challenging material is often just not interesting to the general public. In the 21st century, though, his reputation had increased enough in notoriety that 2006’s The Departed bowed to an impressive $26.88 million.

After that crime movie (also starring DiCaprio) won the Best Picture Oscar, Scorsese’s public profile was at an all-time high, which helped get him and DiCaprio’s next collaboration (Shutter Island) to such tremendous box office heights. It helped too that, being a mind-bending thriller, Shutter Island was more accessible than other Scorsese movies like Bringing Out the Dead. It was a feature that played like a mainstream ghost story-mystery for the masses and led to them showing up in such droves that DiCaprio’s box office records were rewritten. And to think, all of this once seemed impossible when Shutter Island was plagued with negative pre-release buzz.

[RELATED: The 7 Biggest February Movies In History Will Surprise You]

Shutter Island’s Challenging Road to the Silver Screen

Shutter Island began its marketing campaign in June 2009 to herald an October 2009 debut, mimicking the fall launch of Scorsese and DiCaprio’s The Departed. However, in late August 2009, with just five weeks to go until its debut, Paramount Pictures postponed Shutter Island by four-and-a-half months to February 19, 2010. It was a shocking sight that some interpreted as the film being so lackluster that it would be embarrassing to drop it into the 2009-2010 award season. What looked like an ominous sign for Shutter Island didn’t matter to the general public, who still showed up and ensured it broke DiCaprio’s previous box office records.

In hindsight, DiCaprio scoring a new domestic opening weekend high was likely made possible by the delay to February. By debuting in that month, Shutter Island had less competition from other adult-skewing dramas and thrillers. In October 2009, Shutter Island would’ve had to compete with other similar tentpoles. With so many options in the marketplace, would audiences have shown up in enough numbers to give Leonardo DiCaprio a record-breaking domestic opening weekend? We’ll never know, but that February 2010 release date, while initially a puzzling move, certainly didn’t hurt Shutter Island’s box office prospects.

Five months after Shutter Island’s debut, Inception would roll into theaters and gross a whopping $60 million on opening weekend. Very quickly, the record for Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest North American opening weekend went to another movie. Don’t let that dilute the significance, though, of what Shutter Island accomplished 15 years ago. DiCaprio getting a thriller adapted from lesser-known source material (Island was based on a 2003 Dennis Lehane novel) to career-high box office figures reaffirmed his movie star appeal. All these years later, Shutter Island is still DiCaprio’s fourth-biggest domestic opener, a testament to its tremendous box office performance at the dawn of the 2010s.

Shutter Island is now available to rent or purchase from digital retailers.