30 Biggest Subtitled Hits (and where to watch them)
Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 11:02AM Our daily "Year in Review" lists have begun!
Even before the pandemic, box office reporting was becoming more secretive. Netflix was the chief disruptor since their Oscar hopefuls got theatrical releases but numbers were never reported. Other streaming distributors followed and once you added in the increasing regularity of movies simultaneously doing theatrical (generally reported) and VOD (generally not reported) it was chaos. The COVID-19 pandemic was the ultimate disruptor of course, changing global viewing habits, by virtue of Father Time. International cinema in the US has been increasingly demoted to streaming-only since adult audiences have been the toughest to lure back to the theaters. That said there are subtitled pictures that played theatrically this year and we wanted to honor them by noting the success stories...
Curiously the only foreign country that habitually reports big box office numbers in the US is India but those numbers are often reported as "estimates" in the way, say, European titles didn't tend to be. Furthermore Indian pictures, RRR being an obvious exception, don't tend to get much US media coverage even though they sell tickets, at least in specific areas of the country which makes it all kind of confusing in terms of "what is a success?". But here are the numbers that were reported, some surely more accurately than others. The numbers are primarily drawn from two sites (box office mojo and the numbers). Titles with up arrows are still in theaters
TOP 33 SUBTITLED HITS OF 2022 AT THE US BOX OFFICE
Rank for the calendar year / Movie Title / $ Estimate Domestic Gross / $ Global Gross
Figures updated as of 01/15/23
