The Big Picture
- Despite not being known for creating financially successful films, Martin Scorsese's recent films, including The Wolf of Wall Street, have been among his most successful, demonstrating his blockbuster potential.
- The Wolf of Wall Street achieved massive success at the box office, earning nearly $400 million globally, surpassing Scorsese's previous classics in terms of gross earnings.
- Leonardo DiCaprio, who collaborated with Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street, has been a crucial factor in the financial success of Scorsese's highest-grossing films, as his star power and selective choices create anticipation among audiences.
Martin Scorsese is certainly one of the best filmmakers of all time, but that doesn’t mean he’s also one of the most profitable. While directors like Steven Spielberg and Sir Ridley Scott have created films that have been both critically well-received and financially successful at the global box office, Scorsese isn’t necessarily known for breaking the bank with his films; his 2016 religious drama Silence wasn’t exactly doing Ready Player One money. However, Scorsese may have discovered that when it comes to financial success, he no longer needs to gamble on borrowed time. In fact, Scorsese’s recent films have been his most successful, with 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street becoming the highest-grossing film within his entire filmography. Whether it was the appeal of LeonardoDiCaprio, the humorous tone, or the breakout performance by Margot Robbie, the controversial biopic showed that Scorsese had greater blockbuster potential than his early career suggested.
Why Was ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ Such a Smash Hit?
With nearly $400 million at the global box office,The Wolf of Wall Street is the biggest film of Scorsese’s career; the film reached more than just a cinephile audience with its attention-grabbing content. The 2013 Oscar-nominated biopic may have been borderline NC-17 with its exorbitant amount of sexual content and drug use (and a solid three hours long), but it somehow managed to out-gross classics like Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Casino. It was the latest in a line of recent successes for Scorsese; he had previously scored nearly $300 million for both 2010’s Shutter Island and 2006’s The Departed, respectively.
The Wolf of Wall Street had begun a robust marketing campaign that rivaled Scorsese’s other work. The inflammatory trailers played up the absurd content, and turnedDiCaprio’s interpretation of Jordan Belfort into a walking, talking meme-machine. Additionally, the film inherently attracted interest because of all the controversy surrounding its release. 2013 was still a time when it was rare for three-hour-long films (especially those that didn’t feature Hobbits or superheroes) to be released to a wide theatrical audience. The film also caused a stir about the amount of profanity (breaking the record for most uses of the f-word), creating a moral panic that seemed to infect every headline surrounding its release.
It turned out that in the case of The Wolf of Wall Street, no publicity was bad publicity. The film attracted a lot of attention after several members of the Academy Award voting committee walked out of a press preview screening of the film, in which several senior members of the Oscars’ voting body heckled both Scorsese and DiCaprio for the amount of lurid content in the film. Regardless, The Wolf of Wall Street still managed to earn five Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay for Terrence Winter, and Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill.
It was a rare case in which the limited theatrical rollout (which predated the wide release) actually ended up working in the film’s favor. Every headline about The Wolf of Wall Street seemed to suggest that the film contained so much depraved content that viewers simply had to watch it for themselves in order to have an opinion; it became the “must-see” film of 2013 in a year in which the Academy Award-nominated films were actually appealing to an audience outside of Oscar voters. Films like Gravity, Captain Phillips, 12 Years A Slave, American Hustle, and Dallas Buyers Club attracted average audience members, creating more interest in the eventual awards race in early 2014.
Leonardo DiCaprio Is Scorsese’s Secret Weapon
When looking at Scorsese’s highest-grossing films, they tend to have one thing in common: Leonardo DiCaprio. In addition to the success of both The Departed and Shutter Island, Scorsese and DiCaprio's work on Gangs of New York and The Aviator earned $200 million a piece. Granted, each film’s success may have been attributed to other factors. Shutter Island and The Departed were both genre films that may have appealed to horror or crime movie fans, and both Gangs of New York and The Aviator were about historical events that may have attracted casually interested viewers. However, it’s hard to deny that over time, movie audiences had been invested in seeing projects that Scorsese and DiCaprio worked on together.
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DiCaprio had become a more selective actor in 2013. He tended to dominate headlines, but only appeared in only a handful of films, creating anticipation for whatever he chose to work on next. DiCaprio was on a hot streak during the time of The Wolf of Wall Street’s release. His performance in Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 western thriller Django Unchained had been highly acclaimed, and the summer’s surprising smash hit The Great Gatsby became one of his biggest films since Titanic. DiCaprio remains one of the few actors who can attract audience attention based on his name alone; it’s worth noting that following The Wolf of Wall Street, his subsequent work on The Revenant and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was also very financially successful. Don’t Look Up may have only been released in a handful of theaters, but it still became one of Netflix’s most-viewed titles ever. This was also during a period of time when the fervor around DiCaprio potentially winning his first Oscar was at its peak.
2013 was a very different time for the American cinematic landscape. While the year’s top grossers were still comic book movies and animated films (with Frozen and Iron Man 3 both earning over $1 billion), mid-budget dramas and star vehicles still had a chance to grow. It’s also notable that this was before Netflix became a huge factor in films’ success at the box office; before the days of streaming, audiences interested in prestige content had to actually trek out to the theaters to see new films instead of waiting at home to stream them instantly. The success of The Wolf of Wall Street was unique, but unquestionably, the more eyeballs on a new film from Scorsese and DiCaprio, the better.
