Though not the most famous entry in his filmography, a 1990s science fiction movie achieved a stunning box office record for Mel Gibson. Gibson has a career that spans over four decades, and his first accredited acting role was in Summer City as Scollop. In the late eighties and nineties, he became a household name with roles in the Lethal Weapon series, Braveheart, and Ransom, and these movies dominated the box office when they were released and generated interest in Mel Gibson’s film career. Alongside his affiliation with action and thriller films, Mel Gibson won an Academy Award for Braveheart and directed the action-adventure film Apocalypto.

Even later in his career, Mel Gibson maintained mainstream success with his movie roles, even if they weren’t all box office hits. He has earned over $4 billion at the box office in his movie career, according to The Numbers. Among his biggest box office films and sometimes considered one of Mel Gibson’s best movies, is a science fiction film that gets overlooked by his more fast-paced roles.

Signs Is Still Mel Gibson’s Best Movie At The Box Office

Signs Is A Science Fiction And Mystery Film Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.

Signs is the story of Reverend Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) who finds strange crop circles appearing on his farmland once he moves in. It was released in 2002 and had a $72 million budget, and it grossed over $408 million at the worldwide box office. Director M. Night Shyamalan had a mindset when making Signs, was that he was going to try and balance art and entertainment regarding the film budget, and he told The Hollywood Reporter that when making Signs he learned he shouldn’t, “take [the money] unless you’re having fun, and you’re entertaining.”

Since the director treated the movie like a passion project, it’s unsurprising that Signs became Gibson’s highest-grossing film. The cinematography led to Signs being hailed as one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best movies because it focused on eerie shots of the farmland and the crop circles that work to build the mystery of what was happening to the land. Mel Gibson at the time also had a lot of box office appeal, which helped the movie to do well commercially, and M. Night Shyamalan was at the peak of fame after making The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable a few years before.

Why Mel Gibson’s Biggest Movie At The Box Office Is Surprising

Mel Gibson is Primarily Known For His Work In The Action Genre, Not Sci-Fi.

The success of Signs may have been partly due to its star power, but among Gibson’s most well-known roles, it is still a shock because most of his recognizable roles are in action or thriller films. Financially, his most successful films after Signs are What Women Want, a rom-com that made $374 million at the box office, and the action film, Lethal Weapon 3, which made $319 million at the box office. These films are typically regarded as much bigger movies than Signs

Along with Passion of the Christ, The Lethal Weapon films are often discussed as Mel Gibson’s biggest contribution to cinematic history since he played Martin Riggs in four well-known films. However, Signs had critical and commercial success and showed Mel Gibson’s range as an actor playing someone struggling with his faith, grief, and understanding of an unnatural threat. The recipe for the success of Signs is still hard to pinpoint 22 years later, but it is a mixture of effective direction from M. Night Shyamalan and Mel Gibson’s stellar performance that made Signs Mel Gibson’s biggest film.

Source: The Numbers, IMDB, and The Hollywood Reporter.