10 Spanish-Language Movies That Blew Up the U.S. Box Office
American moviegoers have always been known as a particularly subtitle-averse group. Indeed, with the biggest film industry in the world, U.S. audiences generally have little reason to venture beyond their Hollywood comfort zone in search of lesser-known foreign language gems, and let’s face it: a lot of people prefer not to spend an hour and a half reading in a dark room. Of course, this popular wisdom belies the fact that foreign language films in most overseas markets are actually often dubbed into the local language – a practice abandoned by American distributors decades ago – but the point still stands.
Recently, however, an article by Variety film critic Scott Foundas, suggested that the U.S.’s subtitle-phobia has officially come to an end, and indeed, he may be right. Recent blockbusters like Inglorious Basterds, Slumdog Millionaire, District 9, and Avatar all prominently featured subtitles to translate everything from French, German, and Hindi to an assortment of alien languages.
Thing is, none of these films are actually foreign. In fact, statistics show that foreign film viewership is down 61 percent over the last seven years in the United States. So while U.S. audiences may be increasingly more comfortable with the prospect of reading in a movie theater, the rapidly changing dynamics of film distribution have left little room for foreign releases alongside the glut of franchise blockbusters and low-budget American indies.
So as the moviegoing experience slowly adapts to a changed digital reality, it remains to be seen whether foreign films – subtitled or not – can still stake out their place in the American box office landscape. And after a 15-year ascent into the top echelons of international cinema, Latin American films will undoubtedly continue to be an important bellwether. In light of these developments, we decided to take a look back at some the U.S. box office’s highest grossing Spanish-language films of all time. For even the casual Latin American film nerd there will be very few surprises, though the numbers are extremely revealing.
Interesting to note is that the only two films on this list that were released over the last seven years (Instructions Not Included and Un gallo con muchos huevos), were marketed almost exclusively to Spanish-speaking American audiences. On the other hand, your more typical international art house fare (Pan’s Labyrinth, Volver) is already showing its age, in a reflection of declining interest from specialized distributors and American audiences alike.
So take your time, peruse, and make your own conclusions. Let’s just hope this list gets a lot longer over the next few years. Pro tip to distributors, stop thinking of movies from Latin America as foreign films. The United States has more Spanish speakers than Spain! That’s a lot of people who can watch movies en español and don’t need subtitles.
All box office numbers below were taken from the film’s domestic total gross as listed on Box Office Mojo.