The 10 Highest-Grossing R-Rated Movies Of All Time

Released in 2021, as audiences were still getting used to cinemas agains after the Covid-19 shutdowns, Detective Chinatown 3’s $686M takings at the international box office were enough to land it in sixth place on the global charts that year.

That’s no mean feat for an R-rated movie, and at the time of release it was the highest earning film to receive that rating by the Motion Picture Association that was also not in the English language.

The movie is the third instalment in the hugely popular buddy cop series. It also sees Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran return to play the odd couple detectives Tang Ren and Qin Feng — this time with a mystery that takes them to Tokyo. 

Box office: $686,257,563

Considering how profitable horror movies can be, and considering how frequently they receive R-ratings, there are surprisingly few on the top 50 highest grossers of all time.

Released in 2017, Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It quickly became the highest earner of any of them, peaking in the top 10 in third place at the time of its release.

That it’s already slipped to ninth probably tells you all you need to know about the last 10 years of R-rated movies, but it’s still a huge achievement for something that only cost around $30M to make. 

The story follows a group of suburban kids who are stalked by a killer clown named Pennywise that lives in the sewers — a character who was first immortalised by the late, great Tim Curry in the 1990 original and for a new generation here, by Bill Skarsgård.

The sequel, It Chapter Two, also ranks at a respectable 26th place on the all-time list. 

Box office: $704,242,888

At time of writing, all three of the original Matrix movies are still on the all time top 50 list: Revolutions in 40th place, The Matrix in 30th, and The Matrix Reloaded still holding firm in eighth position a mighty 23 years after its release.

Of course, at that time it was the highest grossing ever, smashing a 12 year old record held by Terminator 2: Judgement Day by close to a quarter of a billion dollars.

Similar to that James Cameron classic, Reloaded earned its hype by being the sequel to one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time. Unlike T2, however, it didn’t flip the script on its predecessor but it did expand on the lore of the series — so if you happen to be a fan of inventive action cinema that’s also dense with sci-fi ideas, this is a movie that you won't want to plug out from. 

Box office: $741,847,937

It’s funny to think that Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool has been with us for more than 10 years. The first movie in the Deadpool trilogy celebrated that anniversary this February — a decade in which it can certainly claim a substantial influence on the industry at large.

It not only paved the way for James Mangold’s Logan the following year (which opened in third and is currently in 11th position on the highest-grossing R-rated films list), but it also proved to Hollywood executives that it was possible to push the boat out when it came to violence and profanity in superhero movies and still turn a very healthy profit.

A few weeks into its 2016 release, it overtook The Matrix Reloaded as the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever. It also made a lot of people laugh.

Box office: $782,612,155

Two years later, in the peak superhero summer of 2018, Reynolds’ Merc with a Mouth returned in Deadpool 2 and broke his own record in the process, taking the number one spot on the all-time R-rated list.

This is, of course, the movie in which Josh Brolin plays Cable, a casting decision that allowed our hero to crack a Thanos joke while Avengers: Infinity War was very much still in cinemas.

That might have been the peak for Reynolds’ meta shenanigans, but the movie has plenty of other stuff going for it: not least the hilariously misplanned group sky dive sequence in which most of Deadpool’s X-force teammates perish in increasingly gruesome and hilarious ways — making the most of that R-rating in the process.

Box office: $785,896,63

For 15 years, it looked like Spirited Away was virtually untouchable as the highest-grossing anime movie of all time. Then came Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name in 2016, which nudged ahead. However, Demon Slayer The Movie: Infinity Castle, released in 2025, has blown them both out of the water.

The $800M movie also became the highest-earning R-rated anime of all time, pretty much by default, and currently still sits in fifth position on the all-time list of R-rated releases. The hugely popular movie is the second Demon Slayer feature overall and the first in a planned trilogy that will apparently close out the manga series’ story arc. 

Expect more movement on this list when Parts 2 and 3 are released. 

Box office: $793,409,465

Like R-rated blockbusters, the Academy took a while to warm to R-rated movies — the first to win Best Picture was Midnight Cowboy in 1969. However, it's become less the exception than the rule in recent years: a formidable 80% of the winners in the 2010s came with that once frowned upon rating, and every win this decade so far bar CODA has had the same.

Only three of these, however, currently place on the top 50 highest-earning R-rated movies of all time: Gladiator (28th), The King’s Speech (47th) and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (which debuted in second and has since slipped down to a respectable fourth).

The hugely influential three-hour biopic of the inventor of the atomic bomb was notable for having the first ever Nolan sex scene, which, due to the MPA’s notorious squeamishness about physicality that doesn’t involve violence, is why it also became the director’s first R-rated movie since Insomnia — not that it did anything to stop it. 

Box office: $983,148,052

Unlike Oppie, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who watched Todd Phillips’ Joker was surprised to learn that the movie was rated 'R'. The Batman villain’s origin story featured scenes of such raw vigilante violence that a subset of viewers became genuinely worried that it might inspire copycat crimes.

Thankfully, much of that stuff remained online, but the stench of it was enough to inspire Philips to clap back with a bizarrely unsatisfying sequel that was also one of the greatest acts of trolling in modern cinema. 

However you feel about all that, the original did it all: peaking at number one on the all-time R-rated list, earning a nomination for best picture, and winning an Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. It still very much slaps. 

Box office: $1,078,751,311

Philips’ movie held the top spot for five years before Ryan Reynolds returned to reclaim it for the third time. The movie, of course, was Deadpool & Wolverine, a multiverse-hopping romp that will likely go down as the most chronically online superhero movie ever made.

It earned that moniker thanks to cameos from the likes of Wesley Snipes’ Blade and Chris Evans’ Human Torch and for the inclusion of Channing Tatum’s Gambit — a stunt that was probably about 70% fan-casting wish-fulfilment and 30% a joke about his dodgy creole accent. 

Either way, it made an absolute killing. 

Box office: $1,338,073,645

When Reynolds reclaimed the top spot with D&W, he probably didn’t think he’d lose the crown within three years to a swords and sandals epic based on one of the oldest texts in Western literature — but here we are.

It’s kind of strange to think, but Christopher Nolan — a famously polite and gentlemanly fellow — is currently the only filmmaker with two movies in this very specific top ten. What's more, if The Odyssey goes on to win Best Picture, he’ll become only the second filmmaker in history to have two R-rated winners in that category, the other being Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather Part I and II.

Now that’s what I call a homer. 

Box office: $1,552,605,000