25 Top-Grossing Fall Movies Audiences Fell in Love With

Autumn is typically a lull between summer blockbusters and the holidays, but there's more potential in that slow season than Hollywood admits.

Author:
Jason Notte
Publish date:
Oct 8, 2016 4:40 PM EDT

Autumn is typically a lull between summer blockbusters and the holidays, but there's more potential in that slow season than Hollywood admits.

Editors' pick: Originally published Oct. 5.

Don't call fall the movie industry's slow season: it's just heating up.

Often considered a dumping ground for some of the year's less-desirable films, fall has become an important bridge for the industry between summer blockbuster season and the holiday/awards season. It's when the earliest Oscar hopefuls hit the screen and when the kids movies that didn't quite make the cut for the summer schedule come out to lend parents a hand on the rainy weekends between the beginning of school and the first holiday breaks.

In 2015, according to BoxOfficeMojo, U.S. box office earnings dropped from $4.46 billion from Memorial Day through Labor Day to just $1.28 billion from early September to just before Thanksgiving. It's a fairly dramatic slide, but not as bad as the $1.14 billion post-New Year's winter through March that followed the $2.84 billion November-through-New Year's holiday season of 2015 that was buoyed by the latest Star Wars installment.

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Sure, it's still a transitional period. The superheroes don't typically show up until November (if they make a late-year appearance at all), and the big series -- Twilight, Hunger Games, The Hobbit, the James Bond films -- also hold off until the holiday season. However, if you're looking to spring a sleeper comedy on unsuspecting audiences, trying to build a horror franchise or just want to find a way to make kids sit still during a school-year weekend, fall has what you're looking for. We checked in with the folks at motion picture industry site BoxOfficeMojo and found the 25 highest-grossing fall movies of all time. While only one of them cracks the all-time Top 100, all of them fared far better in this window than a motion picture typically should:

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.

Released: October 11, 2013U.S. box office gross: $107.1 millionYou really have to be in a certain kind of mood to watch Tom Hanks be beaten and physically and psychologically tormented for the better part of two hours. If you're there, however, stay with it: Director Paul Greengrass's final moments of this film are among the most realistic depictions of trauma and post-traumatic stress you'll see without witnessing it firsthand.

Released: October 16, 2009U.S. box office gross: $107.9 millionIt cost $15,000 to make as an indie, its actors were paid in the three-figure range, it had no script, it took almost two years to get to wide release, it was shown in markets based almost solely on online demand and long stretches of it involve absolutely nothing happening at all. It remains one of the most frightening examples of the "found footage" genre of horror films and, five sequels later, still holds up better than the films it spawned.

Released: October 9, 2009U.S. box office gross: $109.2 millionThis ensemble comedy directed by Peter Billingsley (yes, the "you'll shoot your eye out" kid from A Christmas Story is far dumber than the cast propping it up. Vince Vaughn and John Favreau have a mini Swingers reunion with Kristen Bell, Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis, Malin Akerman, Peter Serafinowicz, Ken Jeong and Jean Reno, and the best they can get out of it is sight gags and a whole lot of product placement. However, the sheer dearth of offerings around this time of year means great things for big, dumb adult comedies...

Released: October 24, 2003U.S. box office gross: $110 millionAs if on cue. Despite the fact that even Shawn and Marlon Wayans -- who came up with the idea for this series in the first place -- had bailed on the series at this point, the Scary Movie franchise would keep going under the guidance of Airplane! and The Naked Gun director David Zucker. The gags degraded into pale "parodies" of movies like The Ring, The Matrix, and 8 Mile -- which haven't exactly aged well since 2003 -- and hip-hop cameos. Somehow, this series was still two sequels and ten years away from its demise.

Released: October 22, 2004U.S. box office gross: $110.3 millionThe U.S. developed a real love of Japanese horror in the early 2000s, and this Sarah Michelle Gellar treatment of 2002's Ju-On: The Grudge only stoked it all the more. While considered one of the pillars of the onryō subgenre of murderous vengeful-spirit films, The Grudge and Kayako Saeki's creepy ghost received a big boost from another fall film that kicked off this whole trend.

Released: September 29, 2000U.S. box office gross: $115.6 millionThis film always seems far older than it is, largely because the treacly, overly sentimental treatment of the real-life desegregation of the T.C. Williams High School football team in Virginia back in 1971 seems painfully dated as a sports biopic device. Things we learned by watching this film: 1. Political statement by football players/teams are only acceptable when Denzel Washington is involved. 2. Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" is a perfectly acceptable funeral song. 3. If your team isn't integrated by 1971, just pretend that every other team in Virginia isn't integrated either and it'll be O.K.

Released: September 24, 1999U.S. box office gross: $116.7 millionA completely forgettable thriller with Tommy Lee Jones chasing down a fugitive (but not Harrison Ford: that's another, better movie) who's been framed by her own husband for his murder. We honestly don't care about ruining this movie for you, because the terrible title forces us to. When Ashley Judd finally gets around to killing her on-screen husband, if only in self-defense -- she isn't protected by the "double jeopardy" clause. Those were two separate incidents. That nobody could figure that out before producing this film and releasing it tells you just how dumb things get around this time of year.

Released: October 15, 2010U.S. box office gross: $117.2 millionSpeaking of dumb: hey, remember when 3D could actually sell a movie? This is the gimmick this film was relying on when it got the gang back together ten years later. Johnny Knoxville had a kid and a full movie career to his credit, Bam Margera had an arrest record and Steve-O was two years sober by the time this film came along. Does that make a Lamborghini tooth extraction or bee-hive tetherball any less funny than it would have been in 2000? No, but it seemed to make everyone realize that Jackass maybe had Bad Grandpa left in it, and nothing else.

Released: September 27, 2013U.S. box office gross: $119.8 millionThe premise of the original Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs -- that nearly wiping out an entire island with a machine that turns water into hamburgers is the way to make your parents proud -- is a bit shaky to begin with. Turn those raining foodstuffs into food monsters, however, and, well, it's a bit of a diminishing result.

Released: September 18, 2009U.S. box office gross: $124.9 millionAgain, you invented a machine that turns a healthy, free resource -- water -- into a high-carb diet that made your neighbors obese, your local politicians greedier and your home nearly uninhabitable. And you think this makes you the protagonist? There may be no better metaphor for both the tech and sharing economies than this film.

Released: September 27, 2002U.S. box office gross: $127.2 millionAw, Reese Witherspoon's poor, simple newly engaged fashion designer Melanie Carmichael might not be First Lady material, according to mean ol' New York mom Candace Bergen. Well, let's get her down to sweet, home Alabama and ditch her alias (real name Smooter), reconnect her with her estranged husband that she's still married to, visit the family plantation, go to a Civil War re-enactment, break off that new engagement to be with her glass-blowing ex, punch that concerned mother in the face and then crank up the Skynyrd. In this film that somehow renders both New Yorkers and Alabamans equally insufferable, that'll show 'em.

Released: October 18, 2002U.S. box office gross: $129.1 millionYep, this was Japanese horror's big stateside debut, and it was incredible. Director Gore Verbinski's remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ring ended the U.S. slasher streak in a way that Scream's in jokes couldn't: By offering something completely new and disturbing. On paper, cursing people by making them watch disturbing videotape (oh, the early 2000s) doesn't seem all that frightening. In practice, it was scary enough to unleash a wave of Japanese horror movies and remakes on the U.S. for much of the 2000s and inspire U.S. filmmakers to step up their game in the 2010s.

Released: October 18, 2002U.S. box office gross: $132.4 millionWhat does the movie that finally won Martin Scorcese an Oscar have in common with The Ring? Both Trans-Pacific remakes. This take on the 2002 Hong Kong crime drama Infernal Affairs, however, excelled because of one of Scorcese's greatest auteur touches: taking Leonardo DiCaprio and surrounding him with a cast that could act circles around him. Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg (who received an Oscar nomination for the role) and even Alec Baldwin made DiCaprio look more like scenery than a lede, while Nicholson's Whitey Bulger impression and a healthy dose of the Dropkick Murphys in the soundtrack gave the film some hometown credibility that some of the shakier Boston accents (looking at you, Baldwin) couldn't.

Released: October 12, 2012U.S. box office gross: $136 millionWhat's less believable than the CIA posing as Canadian science fiction filmmakers to rescue six escaped U.S. embassy workers after the Iranian Revolution in 1979? Ben Affleck somehow not winning an Academy Award for directing in 2013 after pulling this off with aplomb. Funny, tense, smart -- it's everything you'd hope a film that takes home the Oscar for Best Picture would be. We don't know what more Affleck could have done, but this is one tremendous piece of work that lives up to the real events that inspired it.

Released: October 5, 2012U.S. box office gross: $139.8 millionIf you didn't know, Liam Neeson's character in these movies has a particular set of skills, skills that he has acquired over a very long career. However, none of these skills prevent him, his daughter or his ex-wife from getting kidnapped every few years or so. This is the one where he get kidnapped, which leads to his ex-wife getting kidnapped. All you need to know is that there are lots of explosions and punching, and people with vague and untrustworthy accents are on the receiving end of it.

Released: October 13, 1989U.S. box office gross: $140.1 millionI often joke that cocaine made just about anything possible in the 1980s. This film, with Bruce Willis as the disembodied voice of a baby born to reluctant parents John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, only proves that point. This film's opening credits play over talking sperm racing toward an egg as the Beach Boys play in the background. There's, for some reason, an entire Travolta Tony Maniero/Danny Zuko dance routine set to Katrina and the Waves. The upside of this film is that it helped drop the fortunes of Travolta and Willis so low that Quentin Tarantino rescued both of them with Pulp Fiction in 1994. The downside? Nobody did Alley similar favors.

Released: Sept. 18, 1998U.S. box office gross: $141.2 millionA buddy cop movie where the guy from Friday yells all the time while Jackie Chan, whose only English-language films were dubs of his Hong Kong martial arts films, does ridiculous stunts. Believe it or not, this film wasn't as much of a slam dunk as it seemed years later. However, the rapid-fire delivery of Chris Tucker, Chan's own comedic delivery and the chemistry between the two made it all work. For the New Line Cinema and for audiences, it was an incredibly welcome surprise.

Released: September 28, 2012U.S. box office gross: $148.3 millionWhen Sony complained about Adam Sandler films in its leaked emails, we're guessing it didn't mean this one. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (The Power Puff Girls,Teen Titans,Samurai Jack,Star Wars: The Clone Wars), this particular Adam Sandler vehicle had a Cartoon Network aesthetic and a kid's heart all the way through. Having Sandler play Dracula as the head of a hotel for monsters and surrounding Sandler regulars like David Spade and Steve Buscemi with new blood like Andy Samberg and Selena Gomez. It's one of the few children's movie franchises that's strictly written and presented with kids in mind, and it's something both Tartakovsky and Sandler should be proud of... even if it had to deviate from the Sony-infuriating Sandler-and-friends-go-on-vacation formula to do so.

Released: October 28, 2011U.S. box office gross: $149.3 million After four films over a full decade, the Shrek franchise and Mike Myers's Scottish accent had played themselves out. However, Dreamworks Animation wasn't quite done with it yet and looked to another accented member of the Shrek ensemble for just one more push. That Antonio Banderas's one-note cameos as the European feline fairy tale character in the Shrek films didn't get a sequel of its own tells you just how well this battle against Jack and Jill for their magic beans went down.

Released: October 1, 2004U.S. box office gross: $160.9 millionThere's a whole lot to unpack here: Sharks are Italian mobsters, Jack Black tries to play a vegetarian shark four years before Kung Fu Panda and Dreamworks threw $75 million at Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger and Martin Scorcese just to put this together. While it grossed more than $300 million worldwide, it always came across as a poor man's Finding Nemo and relied way too heavily on dated cultural references to be a hit with kids. It's why, five years ago, Dreamworks said it was ditching parody films like this and Megamind and focusing more on original stories.

Released: October 1, 2004U.S. box office gross: $160.9 millionIt's a TBS favorite, it's a cornerstone in the video collection of aunts and grandparents across the country and it was the beginning of the family friendly Ben Stiller period (think Night At The Museum) that now allows him to take any low-budget role Noah Baumbach throws at him. Unfortunately, it's also the film that nudged DeNiro into a comedic direction that not only birthed to a caricature of the onscreen DeNiro persona, but basically killed the dramatic, Scorcese-era DeNiro moviegoers initially warmed to. Hope the toilet-flushing cat was worth it.

Released: October 3, 2014U.S. box office gross: $167.8 millionNot the film to see on a date or wedding anniversary. As a taut psychological thriller, David Fincher's dark take on Gillian Flynn's novel leaves a bit to be desired. As a pulp mystery aided by Rosamund Pike's cool, unflinching delivery during the film's twists, it's ingenius. Also, we'll note that Affleck seems almost a bit too comfortable in the role of philistine husband to Pike's intellectual, upwardly mobile wife. Fincher's made his name infusing bleak social commentary with dark humor, but there's a whole lot more of the latter than the former in this film.

Released: September 25, 2015U.S. box office gross: $169.7 millionWe're tired of discussing sequels here, so we'll cut to the chase: Adam Sandler's Dracula finally lets humans into the monster hotel and wants his grandchild to be a vampire. This unleashes a whole lot of familial angst when his father, voiced by Mel Brooks, returns. There's another sequel coming in 2018, at which point we strongly hope that somebody else is writing this list.

Released: October 2, 2015U.S. box office gross: $228.4 millionHey, let's abandon Matt Damon on Mars! If this film was that simple, director Ridley Scott wouldn't have held so closely to the scientifically accurate source material, wouldn't have gotten NASA involved and wouldn't have worked so hard on the technical elements of the film that some of the more human aspects beyond Damon were allowed to wither. There are far simpler ways to make Oscar bait, which makes this film's shutout that the Oscars all the more infuriating.

Released: October 4, 2013U.S. box office gross: $274.1 millionIf this was just a George Clooney/Sandra Bullock sci-fi movie, it wouldn't have done this well. No, Alfonso Cuaron's masterpiece is a great metaphor for human survival. Bullock's character could have been trapped on an island, locked in a mine shaft, abandoned in the wilderness or subjected to any number of other isolating experiences, but the vacuum of space seemed as good a place as any to show how we handle what life throws at us. It also makes for some stunning imagery, which wasn't lost on the folks who handed it seven Oscars in technical categories.

25. Captain Phillips

Released: October 11, 2013

U.S. box office gross: $107.1 million

You really have to be in a certain kind of mood to watch Tom Hanks be beaten and physically and psychologically tormented for the better part of two hours. If you're there, however, stay with it: Director Paul Greengrass's final moments of this film are among the most realistic depictions of trauma and post-traumatic stress you'll see without witnessing it firsthand.