Jerry Bruckheimer is one of the most successful producers ever, his movies have grossed over $13 billion, and that will grow exponentially with Top Gun: Maverick, as the film had a $150 million opening weekend. The super-producer has had a countless amount of box office hits dating all the way back to the 80s.
Between creating great working relationships with hitmaking directors like Michael Bay and bankable stars like Ben Affleck and Nicolas Cage, Bruckheimer has put together some iconic blockbusters. And whether it’s a mid-budget comedy, an epic period drama, or a movie based on a theme park ride that turned into a multi-billion-dollar franchise, the producer has some phenomenal successes.
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) – $316 Million
Beverly Hills Cop’s box office success must have come as a shock to everyone involved, including Bruckheimer. The film had a relatively small budget of $13 million, and it went on to earn almost 25 times that at the box office, which is almost unheard of.
Considering the huge gross of the first movie, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the studio continued to greenlight so many sequels despite their consecutively decreasing box office grosses. The franchise still hasn’t come to a close, as while Beverly Hills Cop III was released almost 30 years ago, Beverly Hills Cop IV is currently in development.
The Rock (1996) – $335 Million
The Rock is a passing of the torch both narratively and literally, as the movie follows John Mason (Sean Connery,) a former SAS Captain, teaching his protege, Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage,) his tricks of the trade. It plays out like the old generation movie star handing the thrown over to the new generation movie star, and that’s why the movie was such a big hit. Two Hollywood heavyweights from different eras generally casts a huge net and catches a broad audience.
However, there’s a popular theory that John Mason is really James Bond, and if that’s actually the case, the movie could have made even more money if it was released under the James Bond banner. But, ironically, the movie made more than the Bond movie released closest to it, as 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies grossed a total of $333 million worldwide.
Prince Of Persia (2010) – $336 Million
Prince of Persia made $336 million, which is a huge sum of money, and if any mid-budget grossed that much, it’d be considered a phenomenal success. But the 2010 movie’s box office performance was actually a huge disappointment. Bruckheimer and Disney planned for the video game movie to be a billion-dollar movie and for it to be the next Pirates of the Caribbean success story.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, as the film struggled to find an audience, was considered bland by critics, and it wasn’t even enjoyed by fans of the video game it’s based on. However, the film does have a small number of fans, and there is something of a demand for Prince of Persia 2, but it’s incredibly unlikely it’ll ever see the light of day.
National Treasure (2004) – $347.5 Million
Movies like National Treasure aren’t made anymore, as the family adventure movie is fairly low stakes but exciting, globe-trotting, and full of practical effects. The movie approached the Indiana Jones-type film with a modern lens, and it had never been pulled off so well before.
So much of the movie’s success is owed to the iconic archaeologist, as the movie is full of puzzles that a professional historian is tasked with solving, and that historian has a ragtag team behind him that has great chemistry. The screenplay is box office gold, and with a budget of $100 million, National Treasure did perfectly well worldwide and was just enough for the studio to greenlight a sequel.
Top Gun (1986) – $357.3 Million
Top Gun was the first time audiences saw Tom Cruise for who he really is, an A-list actor that definitely has a death wish. The actor is known for committing to death-defying stunts and outdoing himself with each Mission: Impossible movie, but that thrill-seeking behavior seemingly began with the 1986 film right in front of audiences’ eyes. And fans showed up in droves to see the actor flying jet planes.
Unlike the newly released sequel, which had an inflated budget of $170 million, the original film was made with a relatively minuscule $15 million. And taking into consideration marketing costs and the movie theatres’ cut, even if Top Gun: Maverick makes $750 million, the first movie could still have a higher net profit. That’s especially the case considering how expensive it must have been to delay Maverick by three years.
Bad Boys For Life (2020) – $426.5 Million
Bruckheimer got extremely lucky with Bad Boys for Life, as the movie was released in January 2020, right before a global pandemic that closed down movie theatres for a whole year. And as a result, the third movie in the series was the fourth-highest-grossing movie of the year.
There hadn’t been a movie in a year’s top 10 that had grossed so little since 2008, as The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was the tenth-highest-grossing movie of that year, grossing $419 million. Nevertheless, $426 million is a great success for the threequel, it made more than the previous two movies put together, and it’s well deserved, as Bad Boys for Life is one of the most rewatchable crime movies.
Pearl Harbor (2001) – $449.2 Million
Pearl Harbor landed four years after the huge success of Titanic, which held the record of being the highest-grossing movie of all time for 12 years. The war drama attempted to capitalize on the successful historical disaster and romance approach to the biopic genre.
Making Pearl Harbor was a stroke of genius, as the film hits every beat. There’s a schmaltzy romance, an epic disaster, huge explosions, and an alluring period setting, and no amount of negative reviews could keep the movie from becoming a huge success. As a result, the movie made close to half a billion dollars, and while it isn’t quite the $2 billion that Titanic made, Pearl Harbor had Michael Bay behind the camera, not James Cameron.
National Treasure: Book Of Secrets (2007) – $459 Million
What the second National Treasure’s subtitle is referring to is the President of the United States’ secret book, and that’s the perfect subtitle to sum up the way over-the-top, outrageous, but wildly entertaining sequel. The movie takes again uses American history as a novelty and takes it to a whole other level.
If viewers thought Ben stealing the Declaration of Independence was ridiculous in the first movie, Book of Secrets literally sees him kidnapping the President… for the greater good, of course. But that’s what fans love about the series, and the high concepts and theatricality are what helped the sequel gross a whole $112 million more than the first movie. And though Nicolas Cage won’t do National Treasure 3, fans are still holding out hope.
Armageddon (1998) – $553.7 Million
Armageddon features a simple plot hole that ruins the whole movie. As the movie sees NASA training a group of oil drillers to become astronauts, as they’re sent into space to keep an asteroid from hitting the Earth, it would have been much easier to teach astronauts how to be oil drillers. Of course, the movie does address this, outright covering why it would be impossible to train drillers in such a short time.
But that potential pothole wasn’t an issue with general audiences, as it quickly grossed over half a billion dollars and became the highest-grossing movie of 1998. Director Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer clearly had a great working relationship, as Bruckheimer produced five of the director’s movies before Bay dived into the Transformers series.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean Series – $4.5 Billion
Starting with the very first movie, The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, every single film in the Pirates series has grossed more than any other Bruckheimer production. The first movie grossed $654 million, the following three movies all made around the billion-dollar mark, and the fifth movie earned almost $800 million.
The franchise is such a hot property that Bruckheimer is surely getting increasingly frustrated with each passing day that the development of Pirates 6 is at a standstill. According to the producer, two Pirates movies are in production, one with Margot Robbie and one without, but no new information has materialized in two years.
