Highest-Grossing R-Rated Movies of All Time

Told in a documentary style, “The Blair Witch Project” is about three young movie makers seeking evidence of a legendary witch in the woods in Maryland. They vanish but their equipment is recovered and the found footage documents their project up until their disappearance. The critically acclaimed film was made for less than $1 million and is one of the most profitable films of all time.

The four buddy-cop Lethal Weapons films, all starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, have grossed more than $487 million domestically, but this one outpaced all the others..

The Mike Nichols-helmed farce “The Birdcage” stars Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as gay parents of a son who plans to marry the daughter of a conservative couple. A favorite of both critics and audiences, the movie is a remake of the French film “La Cage aux Folles.”

With Keenan Ivory Wayans at the helm and brother Marlon co-writing and co-starring, “Scary Movie” takes a lampoon sledgehammer to every horror movie cliché. The parody spawned four other films and the franchise has made about $712 million in domestic ticket sales gross in total.

“Hannibal,” one of two Ridley Scott-directed films on the list, is the sequel to “Silence of the Lambs.” Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as the brilliant cannibalistic killer, now on the loose in Europe, and disgraced FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, in place of Jodie Foster from the original movie) is dangled as bait to catch him.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who’ve known each other since they were kids growing up in Massachusetts, were the wiz kid tandem that won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for “Good Will Hunting,” in which both star. Damon plays a brilliant but unmotivated young man. He meets a therapist (Robin Williams) who begins to break down his defenses.

This thriller stars Nicolas Cage as an FBI chemist and Sean Connery as a ex-British spy out to thwart a rogue general holding hostages at Alcatraz and threatening to unleash rockets filled with nerve gas on San Francisco unless the U.S. government pays reparations to families who lost loved ones in classified missions.

Zack Snyder used mind-blowing special effects in his reimagination of one of history’s great military stands – the 300 Spartans against the forces of Persia at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Gerard Butler stars as Sparta’s King Leonidas.

Mel Gibson is an airline executive whose son is held for a $2 million ransom. When the payoff fails, Gibson’s character turns the tables on the kidnappers by announcing on national television that he is making the ransom money a bounty for their heads.

Two years after the first “Hangover” film was released, the sequel finds the guys (Justin Bartha, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, and Bradley Cooper) in the same kind of trouble they had previously encountered – only this time they are in Bangkok. Ken Jeong and Mike Tyson return as well.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, a latter-day Hope and Crosby, play two divorce mediators whose passion is crashing weddings. But they get more than they bargained for when they walk in on the wedding of the daughter of a presidential hopeful played by Christopher Walken. Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher are the girls they meet at the event, and Bradley Cooper makes an early-career appearance in the movie.

The Wachowskis’ mind-bending sci-fi actioner, which challenges reality, won four Oscars. Starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss, “The Matrix” pioneered so-called “bullet-time” action sequences, inspired by Asian martial arts movies.

This often-quoted rom-com stars Tom Cruise as an arrogant sports agent with a conscience who starts his own management firm and is joined by a single mom played by Renée Zellweger. Cuba Gooding Jr. is their lone client in the role that won him an Academy Award.

Ridley Scott’s epic stars Russell Crowe in his Oscar-winning role as the Roman general Maximus, whose family is killed by Roman soldiers under orders from corrupt Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Maximus is forced into slavery and becomes a gladiator consumed by revenge.

Ryan Reynolds returned as the loopy, flawed superhero in a gory parody of the genre. In the sequel, Deadpool recruits mutant allies to protect a teen mutant from a genetically modified soldier from the future.

“It” is based on a Stephen King novel about a group of bullied kids who band together over the summer to battle a shape-shifting monster that disguises itself as a clown known as Pennywise and preys on the children of a small town in Maine every 27 years. Critics hailed the quality of the action and the authentically frightening tale.

Three friends wake up hung over after a bachelor party in Las Vegas. However, the groom is missing. The friends set out to find him and encounter Las Vegas-style zaniness along the way. The film stars Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, and Bradley Cooper, with memorable appearances by Ken Jeong and Mike Tyson. The film was a critical and commercial success and inspired two sequels.

The humor in Robert and Peter Farrelly’s film is sometimes sophomoric, but the rom-com exerts a real sweetness, due to the casting of Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, and Ben Stiller, who helped make it box-office gold.

Box-office sure thing Harrison Ford plays an American president whose jet is hijacked by terrorists. He falls back on his soldier’s instincts to try and subdue the terrorists and rescue his family. The movie is helmed by German director Wolfgang Petersen, whose noteworthy credits include “Das Boot.” and “In the Line of Fire.”

Clint Eastwood directed this story of prolific American sniper Chris Kyle, who served four tours of duty in Iraq, but whose experiences in the war zone left an indelible mark on his psyche and affected his family life in the U.S. It is the highest-grossing movie in Eastwood’s storied career as a director and actor.

“Joker,” about how the arch enemy of Batman came to be, depicts the title character with a chilling realism, which won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar. The film can also be viewed as a look at how society handles those with mental illness.

“Deadpool” puts the cheekiness of Ryan Reynolds to good use as a superhero who breaches the fourth wall and addresses the audience about dealing with his dilemma. He’s a man gifted with extraordinary powers but wears a superhero get-up because he was disfigured during an experimental treatment for cancer.

Loosely based on the story of the Niland brothers, two of whom who perished during World War II, “Saving Private Ryan” is about an American patrol tasked with finding a paratrooper behind enemy lines whose brothers have all been killed in combat. Among the five Oscars won by the film were Best Director for Steven Spielberg and Best Cinematography for Janusz Kamiński, whose filming of the D-Day landings was so realistic that it upset World War II veterans watching the movie.

The second of two of the Wachowski-helmed Matrix films repartnered Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss in this dazzling film that combines action and mind-bending special effects.

Two years before a DUI-fueled anti-Semitic rant almost scuttled his career, Mel Gibson directed this graphic and upsetting movie about the last hours of Jesus Christ (Jim Cavievel). Some critics were appalled, calling it a “primitive and pornographic bloodbath.” It resonated more with audiences and is the most successful of all R-rated movies.