There’s a certain kind of sci-fi that never really ages out. This Will Smith-starrer is exactly that, and its chart come-up right now across most of Europe proves it. On Disney+, for instance, the film is showing up as a multi-territory Top 10 staple rather than a one-country fluke.
Today, as of March 4, it’s sitting at #5 in Australia, #6 in France, Monaco, and Hungary, and #6 in Austria and Switzerland. It’s also holding a broad #7 band across a chunk of Europe, including Croatia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and North Macedonia. Several markets have it hovering just outside the very top but still firmly in the conversation, like #8 in the Czech Republic and #8 in Albania earlier this week before settling at #7 today. And it doesn’t end with Disney+. The evergreen sci-fi is also trending in Nicaragua, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, and Vietnam on the Apple TV Store.
The title enjoying the second-life surge is Men in Black (1997), the 91%-rated crowd-pleaser that pairs a straight-faced veteran Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) with a rookie, Agent J (Smith), who can’t stop questioning the rules, and then rewards you with aliens, gadgets, and one-liners that still hit even today. The charts basically confirm what fans already know: the appeal was never temporary. People didn’t forget it. They just needed a reason to press play again, and that’s probably an algorithmic push this time around.
‘Men in Black’ Was the Third Highest Grossing Film of 1997
At the box office, Men in Black was a straight-up win on blockbuster math. It carried a $90M production budget and finished with $250.7M domestic, $337.1M international, and $587.8M worldwide, roughly 6.5× its budget in global theatrical gross.
The sequels, however, were more uneven theatrically. Men in Black II (2002) cost $140M and grossed $445.1M worldwide (a solid hit, but a step down from the original’s global total). Men in Black 3 (2012) was the franchise’s biggest worldwide grosser at $654.2M, but it did it with a much larger $225M budget, meaning the margin was less automatic than the raw total suggests. And Men in Black: International, the 2019 film starring Chris Hemsworth as the lead, is the clear underperformer of all, as it only managed to rake in $110M budget and $253.9M worldwide. A fifth film, which is reportedly aiming to have Will Smith reprise his role as Agent J, is also in early development.
Men in Black is currently trending on Disney+ and Apple TV Store. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Release Date
July 2, 1997
Runtime
98 minutes
Writers
Ed Solomon, Lowell Cunningham
Producers
Laurie MacDonald, Walter F. Parkes
