Westerns are one of the most instantly recognizable movie genres on the planet. If you show someone a picture of John Wayne or a cowboy riding off into the sunset, they’ll immediately understand that those images belong to the domain of Who Shot Liberty Valance and High Noon. However, the Western is also one of the more restrictive genres at the worldwide box office. Only 13 Westerns in history have ever cracked the $100 million mark worldwide. This is due to a slew of factors, including the fact that the biggest Westerns in history were released in the 1940s and 1950s when ticket prices were cheaper and box office records weren’t as comprehensively kept. However, it’s also due to the Western genre just not being as universally appealing to international moviegoers as other types of escapist cinema.
But there are rare exceptions to this norm, like Django Unchained, which became the biggest Western of all time with a $449.8 million worldwide haul at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. Impressively, it made the vast majority of its lifetime global gross internationally, where Django cracked a whopping $287 million. That overseas sum alone put it above the worldwide grosses of all but one other Western in history (Dances With Wolves being the lone exception). Not only is Django Unchained an impressive box office performer and the highest-grossing Quentin Tarantino feature in history, but it’s also something Hollywood can learn from. There are so many other studios that could take away from the formidable box office haul of Django Unchained and everything it accomplished.
‘Django Unchained’ Defies the Ugly, Hollywood Lie
Image via The Weinstein Company
To understand just how significant the box office run of Django Unchained was for Westerns, we must briefly touch upon an ugly lie perpetuated by Hollywood: “Black films don’t sell overseas.” A notion so ubiquitous in the film industry that Entertainment Weekly wrote about in 2007, stating how Hollywood and international distributors tend to believe that American films focusing on Black characters have no chance of making it big in international markets. As pointed out by authors Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris in the 2023 book, The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar, the global appeal of music sung by Black artists alone already makes it clear this concept is nonsense.
However, as late as 2018, director Boots Riley’s movie, Sorry to Bother You was being turned down by international distributors because of the idea that Black-led films don’t travel well overseas. Django Unchained is one of many obvious refutations to this racist notion often used by studios to instantly dismiss the viability of Black protagonists. This was a Western film focusing on escaped slave turned bounty hunter Django (Jamie Foxx) and where the two most prominent white characters die before the third act begins and yet international audiences showed up in droves! One can’t even chalk up that box office success to the fanbase of Quentin Tarantino given that Django Unchained so thoroughly surpassed the international box office hauls of all his other directorial efforts. Inglourious Basterds topped out at a still great $196 million overseas and none of his other pre-2019 directorial efforts ever made over $106.3 million internationally. The premise of and hype surrounding Django Unchained made it a must-see for moviegoers all over the world, not just the presence of its white director.
RELATED: Kevin Costner’s Two-Part Western Movie ‘Horizon’ Sets Release Dates
‘Django Unchained’ Succeeds Because of Its Unique Qualities – Not In Spite of Them
Committing to a Black protagonist gave Django Unchained a unique perspective on the Western genre that immediately set it apart from the default norms of the genre, thus ensuring that it could be seen as more accessible to international moviegoers (who may have felt excluded by the traditional John Wayne-inspired POV of Westerns). Plus, the verve and anger at America’s atrocities underlining the feature gave it a must-see provocative quality. This was not another Western yearning for “the good ol’ days” but rather a Western that allowed the oppressed to get some. That’s a tantalizing concept for a movie for anyone around the world. “You kill white people and get paid for it? There’s nothing like it!” Django stated in the primary global trailer for Django Unchained. That’s the kind of memorable line of dialogue that wouldn’t be possible with a white protagonist, not to mention the sort of distinctive verbiage that would win over even international moviegoers skeptical of a normal Western.
Django Unchained reaffirmed that not only are Black protagonists NOT box office poison but emphasizing the presence of such actors can help make your movie feel fresh. Most importantly, grappling with the horrors of American history and the exciting sight of seeing the marginalized secure grisly revenge helped Django Unchained transcend its genre origins. That might be the most important takeaway for Hollywood regarding the box office success of Django Unchained — you’ve got to make stories that don’t just boil down to “Oh, it’s a Western.”
‘Django Unchained’ Proved the Western Could Be So Much More
Image via Sony
Many modern Western movies end up getting stuck in just being boiled down to simply leaning on the novelty of being a Western. A Million Ways to Die in the West, for instance, oriented its marketing campaign on just “raunchy gags but in a saloon or other recognizable Western locales!” The Dark Tower, meanwhile, delivered trailers that featured lots of generic Western shootouts in between bursts of CG sci-fi imagery. Even Cowboys & Aliens, a seemingly very idiosyncratic genre mash-up, had visuals that often looked derivative of so many other Westerns. The legacy of this genre can be as much a curse as it is a blessing. Westerns are so ubiquitous and well-known that it can be hard to conjure up new images or stories in this genre that don’t feel evocative of the past.
Therefore, it’s best to make new Western movies that have some sort of storytelling hook or appeal to audiences beyond just being “Here’s a new Western film.” People saw Django Unchained not because it was a Western, but because it was a story that interested them. It’s a truism that extends to nearly every other successful film in history. It isn’t just a genre that lures people to the theater, even modern horror films (seemingly a bulletproof phenomenon at the box office) produce flops like Friend Request or Doctor Sleep. You have to deliver material that comes from a very specific creative vision and isn’t just leaning on iconography of the past or the genre your vision inhabits.
What ‘Django Unchained’ Can Teach Hollywood
Image via TWC
As paradoxical as it sounds, the way forward for movie Westerns is largely by making stories that are either incidentally Westerns or don’t hinge their entire appeal on dealing with sagebrush and horses. That doesn’t mean the Western movie is something to be ashamed about or apologize for, but the fact that your movie is in that genre can’t be all your marketing leans on. That’s how you end up with films like A Million Ways to Die in the West, which featured trailers and ads that offered nothing more than the sight of vulgar shenanigans occurring on sets reminiscent of old John Wayne films. Who will that appeal to? What does that bring to the table?
Django Unchained, then, is a sign that Westerns can be universally appealing, provided they have a compelling story that can resonate beyond just die-hard fans of the genre. Accomplishing that kind of resonance would require the genre to further expand the kind of heroes it portrays instead of just leaning on the white male protagonists these movies have favored for so long. Modern hits like Django Unchained, not to mention further moneymakers like True Grit and Rango, have solidified that modern Westerns can still carry a lot of box office juice. All those films, though, had lots of elements (like a unique story, evocative animation, acclaimed performances, etc.) that offered plenty of tantalizing entertainment even to those agnostic to Western cinema. Django Unchained offered a template for how Hollywood can make the Western bigger than ever, but only time will tell if studios will learn the proper lessons from its success.
The Big Picture
Django Unchained’s massive international box office success disproves the notion that films featuring Black protagonists won’t sell overseas. The unique perspective and provocative storyline of Django Unchained made it more accessible and appealing to international moviegoers. Western movies should focus on delivering compelling stories and appealing to a wider audience, rather than just relying on the novelty of the Western genre. Django Unchained showed that a Western can be universally appealing with the right storytelling approach.