The film that was the highest-grossing in every country

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Wed 28 May 2025 12:30, UK

We live in an age of pop culture fragmentation. Thanks to the internet, there are hardly any unifying cultural moments anymore. Once upon a time, people would gather around their televisions at the same time to watch the latest episode of I Love Lucy or M*A*S*H or Friends. These days, even when people are watching the same shows, be it that weird pandemic-induced frenzy over Netflix’s Tiger King or the more recent obsession with The White Lotus, they do it at their own pace, on demand. 

More importantly, there are so many movies and shows landing on streaming services all the time that there’s pretty much something for everyone. Do you like academia and black comedy? The Chair has your back. What about horror and deadpan Latin American humour? Look no further than Los Espookys. And if you love pottery and prefer your reality competition shows to feature gentle encouragement rather than expletive-laden screaming matches, you’re the target audience for The Great Pottery Throw Down.

As for cinema, the niche experience has meant that most people just stay home. Why wouldn’t you, when you can scroll through streaming platforms and find pretty much every movie that’s ever been made, rather than going to the cinema to see whatever handful of blockbusters have just been released? Things used to be very different. 

Cinema was once the ultimate collective experience. Gone With the Wind dominated American culture when it came out in 1939 and quickly became the most successful movie of all time. Adjusted for inflation, it still takes the cake. Forget about The Avengers and Avatar. An estimated 202million tickets were sold in the US alone, which, when considering that the population of the country was only 130million at the time, is pretty staggering. 

That said, Gone With the Wind was a very American-centric story that didn’t resonate quite as loudly in other countries. It made an impact, of course, but it would take another handful of decades before a movie dominated the box office charts in every country. You probably already know which one it is. James Cameron’s Titanic continues to be the single greatest success story in cinema history, and it is quite possible that it can never be matched.

When it was released in December of 1997, it opened at number one in the US and continued to do better business from there. Most summaries of its success point to its astonishing $2.26billion payday at the international box office, but that figure is even more impressive when broken down into individual markets. Twentieth Century Fox released the film in 57 overseas countries, and it was the highest-grossing movie in every single one of them. 

This gargantuan, floating melodrama set to the haunting vocals of Celine Dion would not be denied. No matter your age (over the certificate, of course), nationality, or gender, the ill-fated romance of Jack and Rose was guaranteed to rip your heart out, and for some reason, that is what a record-breaking proportion of the global population wanted. Nowadays, when so few people go to the cinema and the most successful movies are either made for toddlers or adult toddlers (apologies to the Marvel fans), this record is very unlikely to be repeated.

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