Germans Love David Hasselhoff / Live-Action Films

Real Life Examples

In general

• Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters was thrown into the Dump Month of February and barely recouped its $50 million budget in the States. However, it was a massive hit overseas and managed to earned a final gross of $226 million. In fact, 75% of its total gross came from overseas markets. A sequel was greenlit only because of its worldwide success.
• Epics of both the historical and fantasy varieties tend to fare much better overseas. Thus, you have movies like Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Golden Compass doing phenomenal business abroad while underperforming in the US.
• Lampshaded by commercials touting The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor as the then-number one movie in the world. True, if you look at the international box office and not North America (where The Dark Knight's domestic gross alone doubled up The Mummys international one).
• Kingdom of Heaven was especially popular in Muslim countries, which might on the face of it be considered rather strange — after all, the hero (a heavily fictionalized Balian of Ibelin — the real Balian was older, not a blacksmith, and a ruthless political operator) is a Crusader knight who leads the defense of Jerusalem against the Muslims in 1187. The Crusades are, unsurprisingly, something of a touchy subject in the Middle East, especially since the film was released at the height of the War on Terror. However, it also depicts each and every one of the 'Hawks' of the Jerusalem court as a Card-Carrying Villain, especially Reynald de Chatillon (who was arguably even worse in real life than he was in the film), with the 'Doves' being presented more sympathetically, generally coming across a very thinly veiled rebuke of contemporary Western policy in the Middle East. It also depicts Saladin as The Good King and a charismatic leader by contrast, who pointedly puts a cross back on the altar it had been knocked off of in one of the final shots of the film, demonstrating his religious tolerance. While this might seem like a minor moment, it got a literal standing ovation in a cinema in Beirut.
• The horror film A Horrible Way To Die was badly received in its native US but was an acclaimed arthouse film overseas and played at many film festivals. The film's international reception led Lionsgate to pay $6 million for the director's follow-up You're Next.
• The German Star Wars Prequel dubs are popular in English-speaking territories and countries such as Japan that use subtitles.
• 62% of the profits made by Spider-Man 3 were made overseas rather than in its home country, in contrast to the previous two where only 50% and 52% respectively came from other countries. Ditto for The Amazing Spider-Man Series, with 65% of the first movie's profits and 71% of the second's coming from overseas.
• Rinko Kikuchi is a very popular actress worldwide, being one of the few Japanese actors to get an Oscar nomination and starring in critically acclaimed movies such as Babel. However, she is virtually unheard of and in fact rather unpopular in her home country of Japan, mostly due to the fact that fame in Japan is measured by how well you do in television, not film.
• While still a success in America, it has been repeatedly noted that Man of Steel is doing particularly well in Britain (likely because of Henry Cavill) and southeast Asia. It set the highest-ever opening day record in the Philippines.
• The American In Name Only Godzilla (1998). Its departure from the source material angered purists, but it received a warmer response from audiences outside of America and Japan. On the flip side, the more Japanese-inspired monster design of Godzilla (2014) received a less positive response from audiences who were more familiar with the previous American Remake than the original Japanese Kaiju. After all, the camp of movies from the Showa Era are very alienating for mainstream audiences.
• Ghostbusters (1984) is still very popular among the Spanish-speaking public, as is the animated series.
• Akira Kurosawa used to be this. Films such as The Hidden Fortress and Rashomon were absolute smash hits in the West and highly influential in Hollywood cinema, but he was seen as nothing special in his native Japan; in fact, he received a lot of flak for pandering to the Western taste for samurai. However, his reputation in Japan has improved since his death.
• While Edge of Tomorrow opened up to a weak box office total for a big budget Sci-Fi film (29.1 million, with most of its thunder stolen by, of all things, a love story about teenagers with cancer), it was more successful overseas, especially in China and South Korea. It eventually grossed $100 million in the U.S. and $269 million in other territories.
• The Chilean drama No, about the 1988 plebiscite that preceded Pinochet's removal from power, received a mixed reception in Chile, where critics accused it of intentionally downplaying the "No" campaign's successful grassroots organization in favor of celebrating the television advertisement campaign. Outside of Chile, it was critically adored.
• The Last Witch Hunter was a huge flop in North America, but recouped its budget internationally — its China gross was the same as the US one, and it also struck big in both Brazil and Russia.
• Takeshi Kitano's earlier self-produced drama films, including Sonatine and Fireworks, failed in his native Japan because audiences found it hard to accept a famous comedian as serious characters in serious films (his performance as a brutal POW guard in Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence got a lot of unearned laughter from Japanese cinema audiences). International audiences, however, were unaware of his comedy acts and readily accepted him as a dramatic actor, which in turn drew them to his films and helped them become successful. It was not until Hana-Bi won the Golden Lion in Venice that Kitano began to be taken seriously as a filmmaker in Japan.
• Parasite is one of the most critically acclaimed South Korean movies of 2019, but it instantly gained Sacred Cow status with France's Cannes Film Festival awarding it their top prize, the Palme d'Or (with a unanimous vote!) and the Academy giving it their Best Picture award, making it the first Best Picture Oscar winner with non-English language in history. Not only that, it became the most awarded movie of 2020's Oscar ceremony.
• Joker, based on a popular DC Comics' Batman villain, gained a lot of negative press in the US, often attributed to the country's particular current socio-political issues, while it has gotten nigh-universal praise from foreign critics — perhaps exemplified by the Venice Film Festival where it got a standing ovation and won the Leone d'Oro grand prize.
• The UK educational film Apaches was also shown in schools in rural areas of Canada, the United States, and Australia, presumably because of the lesson about not playing on farms being one that all rural kids should learn.

Africa

• Bollywood movies are very popular in Niger and northern Nigeria, moreso than Hollywood movies, which are seen as too sleazy.

Americas

Brazil

• Brazil is the second biggest market for the DC Extended Universe, second only to the US. Justice League was the top-grossing film in the country in 2017 even though it was considered a massive under-performer (that lost about $50 million) pretty much everywhere else. Warner Bros. even chose the CCXP (Comic-Con Experience) in São Paulo to debut the first trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 in December 2019 due to the country's love for the franchise. Even Zack Snyder is nowhere as divisive there as he is in the USA and Europe.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme is really popular in Brazil. Two of his movies, Sudden Death and Replicant, got released there first (the latter did not even get a theatrical release in the USA).
• The Blue Lagoon (1980), which has become more obscure as time goes on in the US and remains a divisive adaptation among fans of the book there, and its sequel, which is even more obscure, are popular in Brazil due to being frequently shown by Globo in weekday afternoons (along with others such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Karate Kid, The Goonies and Police Academy).
• The Italian duo Bud Spencer and Terence Hill got some success in Brazil (and other Latin American countries) — along with the Spaghetti Western genre, to the point Tex Willer has an enduring fandom there.
• The Wayans brothers film White Chicks was terribly received in the USA and is seen as offensive due to its many jokes based on race, gender, whatever. However, it is popular in Latin America, and Brazil in particular loves it to memetic levels, possibly helped by a great dub and frequent reruns. There are even cosplayers who did the "Wilson sisters" before Iggy Azalea did! There are even fans campaigning for a sequel in the wake of the reception to Coming 2 America.

Canada

• Brian De Palma's early film Phantom of the Paradise (1974) was a flop on its initial release but was extremely popular in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and still is to this day. Its initial run lasted two years! It has run intermittently ever since, spawned a festival dubbed Phantompalooza, and some people claim to have seen it more than 50 times.
• Screwball sports comedy Slap Shot, which has become more obscure as time goes on in the US, is an iconic film in Quebec. This is because the two French-Canadian actors in the film translated the film themselves, and they chose to do a contextual translation rather than a normal one. They also used Quebecois French rather than "standard" French for the translation. As a result, it's one of the very few films that bilingual French-Canadians prefer to watch dubbed rather than subtitled. The movie is STILL to this day widely quoted among French-Canadians, and there's even three season ticket holders for the Montreal Canadians who show up to every game dressed as the Hanson Brothers.

Mexico

• According to Guillermo del Toro, John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) was a huge hit in Mexico.
• The 1955 Spanish religious film Miracle Of Marcelino remains popular in Mexico, where a Foreign Remake was made in 2010 moving the setting to Mexico during the Revolution.

United States

• Chocolate is more popular with American audiences than its native Thailand, because of Zen's autistic nature.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon received rave reviews in America, and won four Academy Awards. It launched an interest in the Wuxia genre and singlehandedly jumpstarted Zhang Ziyi's career. In China and Hong Kong, however, the film was seen as "just another action flick." With bad accents, no less.
• Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare films were negatively received in Britain, but very popular in America.
• Richard Curtis movies have their audience in Britain, but are likely to be accused of laying on the "heartwarming" a bit too heavy and playing up a certain type of Britishness to appeal to American viewers... which works.
• Taken had average box office and weak reviews in its native France. When it came to the US, it managed to become the highest grossing film of producer Luc Besson's career and had excellent word of mouth.
  • This is true of most of Besson's work. In France, he's regarded as a Hollywood-inspired hack by many critics. In the US, he's been hailed as one of the most innovative action directors and producers from the 90's onward.
• Kung-Fu movies:
  • In 1970s America, Chinese martial arts movies were quite popular, helped along by the meteoric rise and then tragic death of Bruce Lee, resulting in 'Brucesploitation' and a general kung-fu craze.
  • These films even have a Periphery Demographic within a Periphery Demographic. Hong Kong martial arts movies from The '70s are remembered as kitschy in much of the Western world... but they were huge among urban African-Americans. As discussed here by Bob Chipman and the RZA (maker of the Genre Throwback The Man with the Iron Fists), a combination of cheap dubs playing in inner-city grindhouse theaters and the themes of many such movies (downtrodden non-white commoners studying secret techniques to fight back against The Man) resonating with lower-class minority youth helped make such films into cult classics within black America. This fandom wound up leading to the 1985 film The Last Dragon, which was produced by Berry Gordy of Motown fame and combined the Martial Arts Movie genre with blaxploitation, making what had been unintentional subtext for many viewers into straight-up text.
• The original Gojira was redubbed into English and had additional scenes featuring Raymond Burr added to create Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956). This turned the monster into a Pop Culture icon in the west, even though fans had to go out of their way to search for Japanese imports while Saturday Night Live and other mainstream media treated the other Japanese movies as laughing stocks. Nevertheless, Godzilla's western prescence sparked a theatrical release of The Return of Godzilla in the United States, re-edited and marketed as Godzilla 1985.
• Sexy Beast earned Ben Kingsley an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and launched director Jonathan Glazer's career, but was dismissed or ignored by critics in the UK who were exhausted from the glut of gangster movies following Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.
• The Crying Game was rejected in the United Kingdom due to its sympathetic portrayal of an IRA member. In the United States, audiences didn't much care about this and fixated on the provocative love story instead. The film was a major hit for Miramax and earned a number of major Academy Award nominations.
• The Paranormal Activity movies were smash successes throughout the US, but they were especially popular among Hispanic Americans; this article notes that Latinos purchased a third of all the tickets sold for the first three films. This eventually led to the creation of the spinoff The Marked Ones, featuring a mostly Latin cast.
• While RRR (2022) got good reception in its native India, critics and audiences in the US and other Western countries showered it with acclaim due to its massive spectacle, thus helping it become one of the highest grossing Indian movies in the US.
• The above mentioned Miracle of Marcelino was one of the first Spanish films to be successful in the United States, likely benefiting from the post-War religious revival in The '50s.
• The UK educational film Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive got media attention in the U.S. to the point where a 30-second version of it aired on South Carolina television stations in the 2010s.

Other Americas

• Spaghetti Westerns and American gangster movies were extremely popular in Jamaica in The '60s and The '70s. This is reflected in the names of many Jamaicans deejays (Clint Eastwood, Josey Wales, Dillinger, Dennis Alcapone).
• American policies have been very unpopular in Venezuela ever since the rise of Hugo Chávez. Screening TRON: Legacy in Venezuelan cinemas, on the other hand...
• Nollywood (the Nigerian film industry) movies are fairly popular in the Caribbean. This article explains it as being because of the similarity in cultures of the two areas, with both Nigeria and much of the Caribbean being ex-colonial majority-black and Christian countries. There may also be a certain sense of kinship as most slaves whose descendants now live in the Caribbean were brought over from West Africa (not necessarily what is today Nigeria, but still).

Asia

China

• Superhero movies in general, especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are massively popular in Asian countries and China in particular. Or at least were, since about 2020 the MCU (and most American blockbusters) has/have practically been banned from Chinese theaters (along with diplomatic tensions with the US, local negative reception of the trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the fact Eternals director Chloe Zhao is a persona non grata in China made Marvel skip Phase Four from Chinese theaters) outside the more autonomous and liberal Hong Kong and Macau.
• Aquaman has received good-but-not-great reviews in America, but it was an absolute smash in China, hitting the record for "biggest December opening" and "biggest WB opening", and nearly doubling the gross of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before the film even opened in the United States. This is probably a surprise to Westerners, who have historically seen Aquaman as one of the less popular Leaguers at best, and a complete joke at worst. (Then again, that lack of context likely didn't hurt.) It also helped that the film's release date was moved up so as to not compete with Bumblebee, which left it with comparatively little competition. In addition to grossing over $300 million (over 2 billion RMB), a bar surpassed by only three other foreign films and twelve other films period, it also got great reviews, with its score on Douban (China's counterpart to Rotten Tomatoes) averaging 8.2/10.
  • It also helps that James Wan had directed a massively successful film in another franchise that the Chinese market loves, The Fast and the Furious. His entry, Furious 7, made $391 million at the Chinese box office which is the 3rd biggest Western movie there ever (first is Avengers: Endgame, second is The Fate of the Furious).
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier was surprisingly popular in China partially because it showed that loving one's country isn't the same as loving one's government. Films with this theme are rare in China due to government censorship.
• China loves the MCU so much that the studio has started making changes to the movies for the benefit of Chinese audiences, and sometimes even shooting extra scenes (as was the case with Iron Man 3). According to its screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, Marvel makes so much money in China that the Ancient One was changed from a Tibetan man to a Celtic woman in Doctor Strange (2016) for this exact reason, because the notoriously Tibet-sensitive Chinese censors would have never allowed a movie with a heroic Tibetan character to play at the box office there, and changing it to an Asian woman would have come across as an outdated stereotype. It's also been strongly suspected that this is why a scene in Thor: Ragnarok explicitly confirming that the blonde woman in Valkyrie's backstory was her lover (as well as one showing a woman leaving Valkyrie's room, implying they'd just had sex) was deleted from the final cut because Chinese audiences would have frowned on an explicit portrayal of homosexuality.
• Ant-Man (and its 2018 sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp) are both moderately successful in their home country, but massively popular in Asian countries, especially China. The Ant-Man films are so liked there that there is now an Ant-Man and The Wasp attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland. It’s the second Marvel themed attraction at the resort.
• 2018's Venom. The movie did fine business domestically (grossing about twice its budget there, which is neither remarkable nor anywhere close to some infamous box office bombs it has been compared to like Catwoman (2004) or Fantastic Four), but somehow, it went bonkers internationally, especially in China ($240 million) and Russia.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League did gangbusters on Chinese streaming services, and got rave audience scores there to boot (in stark contrast with the cold reception Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice got there five years prior).
• Ironically, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the first MCU movie to feature an Asian lead, received the exact opposite reaction from Chinese audiences, who were furious when it was announced that the first Marvel movie with an Asian lead would be a Shang-Chi film, because he was originally written as the son of Fu Manchu (even though Marvel has long since ret-conned out the connection, due to Marvel losing the rights to Fu Manchu decades prior to the announcement of the movie).^note Which has forced the movie adaptation to instead use the Mandarin from the Iron Man franchise as the main villain China loves the MCU so much that having the first Chinese lead in the MCU to have an origin story based on Yellow Peril tropes was seen by them as a personal betrayal. The movie ended up not releasing in mainland China after the resurfacing of 2017 comments Simu Liu made about his parents' lives in China before the family moved to Canada.
• Benedict Cumberbatch mentioned that the Tibetan monks he taught English to during his gap year absolutely loved Braveheart and would watch it all the time. The Tibetans feel a connection with the Scots because of their fight for independence from China.
• Transformers: Age of Extinction tried to appeal to Chinese audiences by setting part of the story there and giving popular Chinese actress Li Bingbing a role. It worked: the movie grossed over $320 million in China, (surpassing the American gross) and became the highest-grossing film in the country.
• The 1940 film Waterloo Bridge starring Vivien Leigh is one of the most popular Western films in China. Its popularity among English language learners there can be explained by the slow, carefully-paced dialogue which is helpful for repetition.
• Dragonball Evolution and the Speed Racer movie both performed modestly in the US, but were HUGE in China. The former is notable as it got abysmall reviews and was based of a franchise from Japan, something Chinese audiences usually loathe.
• Pacific Rim was a success internationally, specially in China, and got good critical reviews. But it didn't do particularly well in the US, being beaten by Despicable Me 2 and Grown Ups 2. (In fact, it's actually made more money in China than in the States!)
• Both of the Garfield movies were big overseas successes, and while the sequel Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties bombed domestically, it ended up becoming one of the biggest films in the worldwide market for the entire year, and was particularly well-received in China.
• The 2012 reissue of Titanic (1997) set a box-office record in China, opening at $67 million (more than it made in its entire 1998 run in the country). Titanic enjoys an enduring popularity in China as it was one of the first Western-made movies to have struck a chord with audiences due to its romantic plot and themes of overcoming adversity in times of disaster. Some Chinese viewers even went to London to watch the 3D re-issue of the film in 2012 just to see it in its uncensored glory. The ship's popularity prompted the construction of a replica in Sichuan, and they even invited Bernard Hill — who portrayed Captain Edward Smith — at the launch of the project, naming him the ship's "honorary captain".
• The Expendables 2 outgrossed both The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man in China.
• If only the American box-office is considered, then Warcraft was a flat-out Box Office Bomb, receiving scathing reviews and making only $47 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $160 million. In China, on the other hand, it shattered box-office records, its opening weekend (over $65 million) dwarfing its entire American theatrical run. By the time it completed its theatrical run, it had made over $433 million, with almost 90% of its box office coming from international receipts and over half of it ($220 million) coming from China, making it the sixth highest-grossing Western film of all time in that country.
• The Russian film He is a Dragon allegedly sold a lot of bootleg copies in China. Seeing how its native country wasn't too enthusiastic about it, and that producers never intended to release the movie in China in first place, makes it even more strange — or funny.
• Despite a mediocre box-office response in the U.S. — albeit it still earned almost as much in its opening weekend alone than Xx X State Of The Union did in its entire theatrical run — Xx X Return Of Xander Cage did much better elsewhere, with its international gross exceeding the film's budget in just two weeks. It was especially successful in China, where the marketing focused on Donnie Yen.
• The Fate of the Furious was immensely popular in China, breaking truckloads of box office records and becoming the highest-grossing Western film of all time there.
• In 2019, the Lebanese film Capernaum became the highest-grossing Middle Eastern and Arabic-language film of all time after it proved to be a surprise hit in China, debuting at #2 behind Avengers: Endgame and ultimately grossing $44 million in the territory^*for comparison, it made less than $2 million in North America.
• The Italian adaptation of Zorro, starring Alain Delon, is HUGE in China, due to being one of the first Westerns released in China post-Cultural Revolution. During its initial release in 1978, 70 million Chinese audiences gathered in their local theaters to watch the movie, and comments for the Chinese-dubbed version of the movie on YouTube had plenty coming from older Chinese netizens born in the late 60s/early 70s on how Delon's Zorro is their childhood hero.
• The partisan film "Valter brani Sarajevo" (1972) (eng. "Walter Defends Sarajevo") from communist Yugoslavia at one point became one of the most watched war films thanks to its immense popularity in China. Streets and children were named after characters from the film. The Chinese even produced a beer brand commemorating the film with the main hero and his name on its etiquette.◊

Japan

• Jean-Paul Belmondo's films were pretty popular in Japan from The '60s to The '80s, representing a certain idea of the French badass / Lovable Rogue. To wit, the face of Arsène Lupin III was meant to slightly emulate his, and Hideo Kojima himself paid homage to the man when he passed away in 2021. And, like many French actors of his generation, he was greatly beloved in USSR and countries that were once part of it.
• Edward Furlong, as a result of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, has quite a following in Japan, and has starred in a number of Japanese commercials, and has even released an album there.
• Audrey Hepburn was infinitely more popular in Japan than in western countries. Given that Ms. Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute the third greatest actress of all time, this says A LOT about the Japanese love for her. This is probably because she was one of the few Western women who could fit the concept of the Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Charlton Heston, icon, some may even say patron saint, of biblical epics, historical dramas and cult sci-fi films, was very popular in Japan, where even his lesser films tended to be well liked. Reportedly, Heston's larger than life screen persona reminded Japanese audiences of their Samurai.
• David Lynch is rather popular in Japan, especially Twin Peaks.
• Indian actor Rajinikanth, while no slouch in his home country, has a huge Japanese fanbase, to the point some Japanese fans fly to India to watch his movies on day one.
• Jean Reno's films are also popular in Japan, in a tougher kind of French badass way. Which led him to do some Japandering as... Doraemon, of all things.
• Éric Rohmer's films are usually considered among the most quintessentially French works to ever hit the big screen, but he also enjoyed a strong following in Japan, presumably because of the Japanese affinity for the type of Slice of Life stories that were his specialty.
• All The Marbles bombed in the USA but was popular with foreign audiences, especially in Japan, to the point the movie made enough to get a sequel shot primarily in Japan that was only called off when the director died. Over three years later, it would still be referenced in the country, such as World Wonder Ring STARDOM making its own "California Dolls" tag team.
• Annie (2014): Although it bombed in the United States, the movie was a huge success in Japan, opening at #1 on its first weekend, knocking Big Hero 6 from the top spot and remained in the top 3 for a month. It's still in the top 5 and is the best-selling motion picture soundtrack on the Japanese Amazon website, not counting anime or Japanese productions. Even the original movie is a success, beating western shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and Thomas & Friends in DVD sales. This might be because the Japanese really like musicals.
• Battleship has a rather sizable following in Japan, specifically related to the introduction of the USS Missouri in the climax of the movie and the Moments of Awesome related to it.
• Bohemian Rhapsody was big in Japan, staying in the top 5 for 10 weeks and grossing enough money to make the top 100 all-time films in Japan, beating movies such as Shin Godzilla and Yo-Kai Watch: The Movie. It also got several cheering screenings.
• The Bridge on the River Kwai is one of the few Western war movies to gain popularity in Japan. While the Japanese Army are the film's villains, the main antagonist Colonel Saito is depicted as something of a Tragic Villain and the British military is shown as a Mirroring Faction of the Japanese in their obsession with duty and following orders. Though it probably helped too that the movie downplayed the atrocities committed by Japanese troops building the real Burma Railroad. Either way, Sessue Hayakawa, the actor who played Saito, was immensely proud of the movie for avoiding the Yellow Peril stereotypes which still drove most Western depictions of Japan in the '50s.
• Brotherhood of the Wolf, while often favorably received, got some mixed reviews in the West, often citing its seemingly bewildering mix of genres (horror, period film, thriller, martial arts), and has lapsed into something of obscurity, especially outside of its native France. In Japan, however, it was much more favorably received, and served as a huge inspiration for Bloodborne, with much of the aesthetic and concept of the game being taken from it.
• The Cave of the Yellow Dog movie from Mongolia is very popular in Japan, likely due to its exotic setting, the innocence of childhood, and similar themes.
• Desperado: While still only cult status, it has left a thorough mark across Japanese anime, game, and manga creators, especially in the '90s.
  • There are several expies of El Mariachi using weapon cases and poses mixed with his band mates'. Wolfwood's Punisher is a mix of all three musicians' guitar cases. Bulleta/B.B. Hood strikes a lot of poses from the movie and launches rockets from her basket, naturally with one leg to the side. Roberta's bulletproof suitcase is fitted with a machine gun a la Campa. Bato has the same getup and guitar case but carries fantasy Power Armor in it instead. Ricardo Gomez adds references to the sequel with a flamethrower and guns built directly into his guitar. Beyond the Grave whips around dual pistols with El Mariachi's flamboyance and carries a coffin that functions as a mix of all three guitar cases, launching rockets in a familiar stance.
  • The first episode of Cowboy Bebop recreates the look of the bar and characters. Hellsing likewise homages some gunfight shots from the film. There is no telling how many characters have recreated Quino's rocket launcher pose, up to more recent titles like Nichijou and Kill Me Baby. A collection of some examples◊ including people playing with action figures.
• Die Hard: The movies' biggest foreign box office profits are from Japan, with the third movie grossing over 81 million dollars. The first movie has been spoofed several time in Japanese media, and even had Bruce Willis come over there to do some commercials.
• Fatal Attraction: Seeing as Yandere is a trope that appears often in Japanese fiction, it's no surprise that the movie was a smash hit there.
• Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame is just as much a pop culture icon in Japan as he is in America. This is because Japan was going through a horror boom when the franchise was at its peak in the 80s, and the films became popular imports to theaters as a result. Jason's backstory also happens to neatly slide into various Japanese horror tropes, adding to the appeal. To date, every film in the series has been released in Japan with dubs and there's even exclusive merchandise and home releases. The Japanese VHS release of Part III, in particular, was a very sought after import, being the only way to see the film 3D-formatted at home for a time.
• Ghost in the Shell (2017) received a lot of controversy before it was even released due to the Race Lift nature of Scarlett Johansson playing the role of The Major in an anime adaptation with many saying an Asian actress should have been cast as the lead. This, combined with The Reveal at the end of the film that that The Major's original body was Japanese is believed to be the major factor in the films poor domestic sales. However, in international markets, particularly Japan, where the whitewashing controversy was not considered as much of an issue, the film's gross more than tripled its domestic income.
• The Greatest Showman is huge in Japan. Not only has the soundtrack, like the UK and Ireland, stayed in the top 5 soundtracks ever since it was released there, the country also got a cheering screening of the film, something usually reserved only for live viewings of concerts or movies based on Idol Singer anime.
• Harry Potter is extremely popular in Japan, even more so than in its native UK, and only second to the United States, which is why Japan is getting its own Wizarding World theme park.
• Hudson Hawk was a complete and utter box office Bomb in the USA, mainly because it was marketed as a serious action flick (to get the Die Hard fans interested, probably) when it very clearly is a comedy... which is why it has a popular following in Japan, because it's pretty much a Spiritual Successor of Lupin III.
• Jumanji: Its massive popularity in Japan led to the release of a Pachinko game in 2007.
• Jurassic Park is popular in Japan, due to the country's high interest in dinosaurs. The country's Universal Studios theme park has an area based on the films (although it's downsized compared to Island of Adventures's version), a manga adaptation of the first film was published in 1993, and there was an exhibition utilizing the JP franchise which also came with a tie-in video game for the Game Boy Advance. And now with the success of Jurassic World, there's going to be a new flying coaster ride in Universal Studios Japan.
• The Last Airbender: M. Night Shyamalan claims he had this reaction when hearing about his adaptation, saying that people in America called him an idiot where people in Japan viewed him as a genius for the changes.
  • A little bit of Fridge Brilliance: the original Nickelodeon series is not really popular in Japan. This may have to do with the different treatments of the Fire Nation: they're clearly a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Imperial Japan in the cartoon, but all Fire Nation characters are played by Indian actors in the live action movie.
• The Mask has a dedicated following in Japan, as despite how The Mask is a representation of anarchy, which Japan typically dislikes, Japanese fans tend to view Stanley as an Escapist Character due to his relatable position as a beleaguered Salaryman, and The Mask as symbolic of venting out frustrations that Japanese workers tend to not get the chance to do.
• Miracle of Marcelino was a unexpected success in Japan given the cultural differences, though mostly thanks to its music schore. It was also remade as an anime in 2010.
• Pan bombed in the United States against competition from Hotel Transylvania 2 but was a huge success in Japan. The fact that the story upon which the movie is based is popular in the country helps.
• Rambo: The films are very popular in Japan, which can be explained by the amount of run n' gun games whose protagonists were inspired by the titular character, such as Contra, Ikari Warriors and Ashura (which even became a First Blood Part II tie-in game in America). There's even a Rambo light gun arcade game that was only released in Japan.
• RRR (2022), in addition to its surprise Western success, also became a mega-hit in Japan, to the point it is the highest grossing Indian film over there.
• The Star Wars franchise is huge in Japan, possibly due to the sheer number of references to samurai movie tropes and homages to eastern culture. The franchise is currently a huge Cash-Cow Franchise in there (and it's even bigger after Disney bought the franchise), with tons of merchandise and memorabilia like a Darth Vader themed dictionary, traditional woodblock prints, and even a box of Star Wars-themed koban (traditional golden coins) made of actual gold in addition to a Kabuki retelling of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi that was made in late 2019 to mark the release of The Rise of Skywalker.
• Streets of Fire was very big in Japan, influencing the anime Bubble Gum Crisis and the game series Final Fight, as well as its' fighting game counterpart Street Fighter. In addition, while it received an extremely lukewarm reception in the States, many Japanese filmmakers have cited it as a modern classic and major inspiration, as well as an influence on the style of Japanese 'yanki' — or delinquent — culture. Undoubtedly, a part of this also had to do with the popularity of Diane Lane, who — aside from acting — did extensive modeling and advertising in Japan, and was a popular Japanese counter-culture icon.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993): Despite being a complete box office flop and fell deep into obscurity until the Internet age, it is still hailed in Japan as an awesome flick. Some even found it better than recent Mario titles, which, to them, had become dry and redundant.
• Russian movie T-34 unexpectedly garnered a sizable fanbase in Japan and inspired a large amount of fanworks (here's a selection).
• Ted proved to be a big hit in Japan, managing to top the box office for 4 weeks in a row. He's especially popular among young Japanese women in their 20's, who seem to find Ted adorable despite his raunchiness and foul mouth. The film was also very popular with Japanese men in their 30's. In fact, Ted became so popular that the official Japanese Facebook page held a contest to celebrate his success in Japan, with the winners being those who wrote most passionate comments about him.
• The Three Musketeers (2011) was a flop in the US. In Japan, it managed to outgross the American numbers and has had very strong legs there. In fact the foreign total to date is five and a half times the amount of the American gross (domestic gross: $20 million, international gross: $110 million).
• TRON: Legacy became quite popular in Japan, where it made most of its foreign box office. That and the popularity of the "Space Paranoids" level in Kingdom Hearts II were the main reasons why Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] has a world based on the film. Moreover, the movie got adapted to a manga, which was released in Japan on June 30, 2011.

Malaysia

• Transformers (2007) is the highest-grossing movie of all time in Malaysia.
• Indian Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan got knighted (or in local terms, getting "Datukship") in Malaysia. No, seriously.

Philippines

• The Star Wars prequel trilogy is more well-received in the Philippines than in the West.
• The top three grossing films of all time in the Philippines are The Avengers, Iron Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The same case of early openings for superhero movies applies there as well, and many of them (either DC or Marvel Studios flicks) scored huge box office records.
• The Corpse of Anna Fritz, a Spanish movie about necrophilia with a very limited release, had over 3 million illegal downloads in the Philippines and such a high response in Philippine social media that the producers decided to release the film theatrically in that country.
• Miracle of Marcelino was a hit in the Philippines where, like in Mexico, it got a localized remake as the TV series May Bukas Pa in 2009 (though given that May Bukas Pa dispenses with the climax of Marcelino in favor of the main character gaining healing powers, it is debatable if Filipinos really liked the original story).
• Despite the movie failing in China and South Korea due to changes from the original, The Little Mermaid (2023) has been a smashing success there. It does help that the country already has a fondness for mermaids as they have multiple mermaid media made locally, and their love for good talent helps too, as they are one of the few countries that loved Halle Bailey's performance in the movie, including her rendition of "Part of Your World" which ended up becoming the no. 1 viral song there on Spotify.
  • In fact, the Disney Live-Action Remakes tend to do very well there, regardless if Pinoys saw/remember the original or not.

Other Asia

• Any Hollywood movie starring Jackie Chan or Jet Li is popular in Asia, flop or not.
  • The Medallion and Around the World in 80 Days (2004) were major box-office flops in the States, but did very well in Asia.
  • Shanghai Knights was considered a failure compared to Shanghai Noon, but it stayed at No. 1 in most Asian countries during the Chinese New Year period. Having a Singaporean actress (Fann Wong) helped.
  • Danny the Dog didn't do well in America, but the movie, under the name Unleashed, has a cult following in Asia.
  • The Forbidden Kingdom, starring both Jackie and Li, a sleeper hit in the U.S., is a BLOCKBUSTER in Asia.
  • One installment of Jet Li's Once Upon a Time in China movie series plays with this trope — the national hero Wong Feihong and all his disciples are well-known all over China — all except for Leung Foon, who's only recognized by people from his hometown.
• Westerns are popular in Asia, with a few Kung Fu films set in the American Old West. A modern example would be the Korean film The Good, The Bad, The Weird, set in 1930s Manchuria. It helps that the "lone hero Walking the Earth" plot is so common worldwide that it can fit in almost any setting; consider Red Harvest (detective fiction) becoming Yojimbo (samurai) becoming A Fistful of Dollars (Western) and later Last Man Standing (1930s gangsters).
  • "Curry Westerns" are a genre in India, where Bollywood movies set in mid-Rajasthan and other dry desert-like areas of the north capture a slight Western feel. The most famous example would be Sholay.
  • Mongolians adore every Western ever. The fact that Mongolians live in Wild West-esque conditions themselves may have something to do with it, along with the nation's fascination with horses.
• Being as Central Asia is the furthest region on the Earth from the ocean, ocean-themed films and television programs do well with citizens of the Asian steppes as they're considered "exotic". Titanic is wildly popular there, especially in Kyrgyzstan. The movie plays about 5 times a day on TV. There are radio plays, novelizations, comics, and basically everything on the market has the image of one the movie's characters on it. There's also the whole class conflict thing, which struck a chord in an impoverished ex-communist country. Plus it's a love story, and that's always popular.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid is so popular in Singapore, the success of the first film there prompted Fox to release the second film 8 days ''before'' the US release. Not many films get this kind of treatment.
• Somewhere in Time was a box-office flop in the USA — but it was a big hit in Asia. In Hong Kong, it played in theaters for a year and a half!
• While Baby's Day Out was a flop in America, it was HUGELY popular in South Asia, especially in India and Pakistan, to the point that it even had two localized remakes: Sisindri in 1995, and James Bond (no, not THAT James Bond) in 1999. Furthermore, the largest theater in Kolkata played the film for over a year straight. It's also hugely popular in Indonesia, to the point where it's considered an essential Christmas movie, with one local television airing it every Christmas morning becoming an occurrence.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service was very popular in Korea due to fortuitous timing. Public anger was boiling over due to the government and rich corporations getting embroiled in favor-trading scandals and people responded positively to seeing the lower-class Eggsy competing and succeeding against upper-class jerks. Double-breasted suits spiked in popularity among Korean men due to this film.

Europe

Britain

• While not as popular as in Asia, Baby's Day Out also did solid business in the UK, and went on to do quite well in VHS rentals. It helped that the UK release of The Lion King, which had completely demolished this film stateside, was held over until much later in the year, meaning that the only real competition in the family film stakes that summer was from the live-action version of The Flintstones.
• While the Walt Disney/Alexander Seversky World War II propaganda film Victory Through Air Power (about how a strong air force and long-range bombs were key to beating the Nazis) went more or less unnoticed in America, it was a huge hit in Britain. It only really started to gain attention in the U.S. after Winston Churchill convinced Franklin D. Roosevelt to see it, which in turn influenced Roosevelt enough to put Seversky's concepts into action.
• Donnie Darko in the United Kingdom. The film was relatively unpopular in the States and managed to earn eight times as much abroad than it in did the US. The makers were aware of this so when the Director's Cut was released onto DVD, a double disc CD of all the music was only released in the UK (as the music became extremely popular in the UK — "Mad World" became the Christmas Number One without a fight). The Blu-Ray Director's Cut was double disc for the UK as well (everywhere else only getting the one disc) and the makers made a 52-minute "film" about the fan following in Britain.
• The film version of Mamma Mia! was only fairly successful in North America, but nearly everywhere else it was an enormous blockbuster hit, mainly due to its appeal to older women. In Britain it actually outperformed The Dark Knight and Titanic (1997) and was, for a year, the highest grossing film of all time over there until Avatar outgrossed it. Understandable, since ABBA has been a British favourite ever since they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in the UK.
• Thor was enjoyed by American critics but it was received even better in the UK.
• The horror-comedy genre tends to fare much better in the UK, where Black Comedy is more accepted, than it does in the US. Examples include the Evil Dead series, Drag Me to Hell and Slither.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol was a decent success in the United States and is considered a cult classic Christmas movie, but in the United Kingdom, the film is even more popular. When it was released in 1992, it topped the box office for two weeks in a row. Park Circus also re-releases the movie uncut every year around Christmas time to a select number of cinemas alongside Frozen (2013).
• The Greatest Showman was an explosive success in the United Kingdom, and saying even that is an understatement. Despite initially opening at no. 3 on its opening weekend, extremely positive word-of-mouth eventually led it to become no. 1 on its sixth weekend. Not only that, but it's managed to outgross movies like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, It (2017), Spider-Man: Homecoming and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to become the fourth highest-grossing film of 2017 there, and managed to stay in the top 5 for thirteen weekends. Its soundtrack album also qualifies, for as of December 2018, it has stayed in the top 5 albums chart since it was released (and is currently the best-selling album of 2018 over there, selling more copies than the US), and many of its singles (original and even re-imagined) have broken the 40 most sold and streamed singles in the country — eight, to be exact! The highest-ranking song, "This Is Me", reached #3 in the UK compared to the US' #58, while the re-imagined version of "Rewrite the Stars" by James Arthur and Anne-Marie reached #8 in the UK and failed to chart in the US.
• Assault on Precinct 13 received mixed reviews and went ignored at the box office when it premiered in the US in 1976. Even Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter's co-writer on Dark Star, was disgusted by the film and felt that it lacked humanity. However, when it was shown at the London Film Festival in 1977, British critics, including festival director Ken Wlaschin, couldn't stop gushing about it, leading to it becoming a smash hit across Europe. It would eventually be Vindicated by History in the US, as well, as critics rediscovered it following the success of Carpenter's Halloween. Carpenter attributes its better reception in the UK and Europe to the fact that they weren't burned out on Westerns in the late '70s (Assault was essentially a loose, modern-day remake of Rio Bravo).
• Peter Rabbit was passed off in the US as just another family film and was a mild success. In the series' native UK however, it's a different story: the film topped the box-office for four consecutive weekends (even keeping newcomer Ready Player One from reaching the top), a feat that hadn't been accomplished since Dunkirk, and eventually became both the second highest-grossing family film of 2018 and the sixth highest-grossing film of the year in the country^note behind Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Black Panther, Incredibles 2, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Avengers: Infinity War. Let's just conclude at this: it was successful enough in the UK to have the final gross in US$ higher than its budget.
• Reservoir Dogs, not a great hit in America but hugely popular in the UK, making Quentin Tarantino a cult figure almost overnight.

France

• Hardcore French cinephiles tend to be quite fascinated with classic Hollywood movies, being the birthplace of The Auteur Theory and the French New Wave, whose critics argued that popular film-makers like Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Howard Hawks were True Art rather than entertainers.
  • French cinephiles also tend to love the auteur side of the New Hollywood, at least until Steven Spielberg entered the picture and launched The Blockbuster Age of Hollywood.
• The French are quite enamored of Jerry Lewis, or at least they were in The '60s, because of how he was able to keep control of his creative vision. He even played in a film in France... but the least said about it the better. Nowadays, it's hard to find anyone under 50 who has seen one of his movies. In 2006, the French Ministry of Culture awarded him the Legion of Honor medal; pictures and a clip of the ceremony can be found here.
• Woody Allen's movies have sometimes been more popular in Europe (and particularly France) than in the United States. Allen himself parodied this phenomenon with Hollywood Ending, in which a filmmaker has to shoot a movie while suffering from stress-induced blindness. It totally bombs in the US... but turns out to be a surprise hit overseas.
• In 1958, the influential French film magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma included a certain Alfred Hitchcock film in their list of the 10 greatest films ever made. That film? (drum roll)... Under Capricorn. Outside of France, however, the film was a critical and commercial bomb, in part because audiences expecting a traditional Hitchcock thriller were surprised to watch a costume drama instead.
• A not insignificant portion of the TRON fandom is located in France. Of course, the late Mœbius being one of the designers on the first film and Promoted Fanboys Daft Punk scoring the second film have something to do with it.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is more popular in France than he ever was in the US, thanks to his accent and acting being covered up. Made that much better by the fact that his manly-voiced, official dub actor (Daniel Beretta) has a voice one never gets tired of hearing, and the fact that it is also the namesake of a GUN.
• David Lynch, like Philip K. Dick, got a lot of praise from French intellectuals, who were talking about more or less exactly the same thing Lynch was making films about (or so they thought). To the point the Revival season of Twin Peaks in 2017 was treated and reviewed like a movie in Les Cahiers du cinéma and put in a number of their "Best movies" of either 2017 or The New '10s as a whole — folks from this magazine never review TV series usually.
• The Mask is considered a cult comedy film in France. This has a lot to do with the European French dub of the film, especially Emmanuel Curtil's hilarious performance as Stanley Ipkiss/the Mask (some even argues that the dub is better than the original). The French "Cuban Pete" musical number is a notable One-Scene Wonder. On the other hand, Son of the Mask, its In Name Only sequel, was met with an even more acidic reception in France, for being a "childhood wrecker".
• Dune has done remarkably well in France in COVID-19 Pandemic times (over 3.1 million admissions) despite the severe health pass restrictions, with rave critical and audience scores, outgrossing local juggernaut Kaamelott: Premier Volet and even beating two Marvel Cinematic Universe films of the year, Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It is Denis Villeneuve's most successful movie ever there.
• Cube lasted only a few days in theaters in its native Canada, went Direct to Video in the US, and only found its audience on home video, and director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali never expected anyone to even bother releasing it elsewhere. In France, however, distributor Samuel Hadida loved it and gave it a wide release and accompanying marketing campaign, and even flew the cast out to France to do interviews. It paid off, and Cube made over $10 million in France and become the second-biggest hit of the summer of 1997.
• Spanish audiences are very critical of Spanish cinema, particularly from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, when it became Common Knowledge that Spanish directors only made boring Author Appeal works or lowbrow comedies (and the heavily censored cinema of The Franco Regime was universally seen as worse). Meanwhile French critics and audiences valued Spanish directors and specially screenwriters for being fresh and original.

Germany

• Westerns have been popular in Europe for a very long time and Germany in particular, even during the Nazi period^note Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels allegedly said the Sioux were Aryans. For their part, the Sioux just hated the Nazis more for it. Today, there is only one known instance of a native Nazi: A Chippewa who, like Nazi teens in America tend to do, shot his fellow classmates.. It was sparked off by the phenomenal success of James Fenimore Cooper's novels in European countries (Last of the Mohicans was even written in Paris), and so e.g. the first German Western/Frontier novels go back to the 1830s and 1840s with authors like Charles Sealsfield (born Karl Anton Postl) and Friedrich Gerstäcker. There already were silent Westerns produced in Germany and Italy before World War I (including one in 1912 directed by Vincenzo Leone, father of Sergio). During Nazi rule, there weren't really any Western movies to speak of, although plays based on Karl May's stories were produced on open-air stages. Westerns as a European major movie genre only began with Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake) in 1962, which began the highly successful series of Karl May films. The success of these West German "Kraut Westerns" in turn led Italian producers to become interested in the genre again (and thus was a factor in the emergence of "Spaghetti Westerns"), while the East German DEFA studios countered with anti-imperialist "Indian films". (So on both sides of the Iron Curtain there was a tendency in German Westerns to portray Native Americans sympathetically). These movies also had a Germans Love David Hasselhoff effect for two actors — Pierre Brice, who portrayed Winnetou, became a huge star in West Germany while remaining nearly unknown in his native France, and Yugoslavian Gojko Mitic, who played the lead in every "Indianerfilm" was one of the biggest box office draws in the GDR and the Soviet Union.
  • How much had this gotten into German culture? German fighter pilots during World War 2 would refer to hostile fighters (what American and British pilots called "bandits"), as "Indians".
  • How much did Germany love westerns in The '50s and The '60s? Highly decorated WWII veteran Audie Murphy was astonished to find that his westerns did big business in West Germany. West Germany's affection for his movies was probably more Germans Love Westerns than seeing him as a Worthy Opponent (Audie Murphy's feats of arms received little attention in Germany, even after 1945) but whatever the case, his westerns remain sufficiently popular in Germany for Koch Media to have released quite a few of them on DVD, including ones which have yet to arrive on Region 1.
• Bud Spencer and Terence Hill are very popular in Germany, mostly due to hilarious dubbing. There's even Bud Spencer & Terence Hill merchandise. German author and poetry slammer Marc-Uwe Kling created characters that are very fond of Bud Spencer movies, despite being a communist kangaroo and the anarchist persona of the author — Spencer's own right wing politics are never brought up in Kling's otherwise very political works. Many Kling fans are Spencer fans as well.
  • Spencer, who was a swimmer before he became an actor, had the public swimming pool in the town of Schwäbisch Gmünd named after him in 2011.
• In Germany, Home Alone was pretty much responsible for making "Kevin" a popular baby name (although that trend really began when footballer Kevin Keegan played for Hamburger SV).
• Intouchables was one of the biggest films of all-time in its native France but the film's success in Germany is just as amazing. The film played more than half a year there and was still in the top 15 every week. It even more than doubled the box office of The Avengers.
• Eskimo Limon, an Israeli series of raunchy sex comedies from the late 1970's and 80's, was surprisingly popular in West Germany, with each film selling twice as many tickets as in Israel.
• German filmmakers seem to have an in-depth passion with experiments in which the dark side of human nature is shown. The first German film that did this was Das Experiment which is based on the Stanford Prison Experiment, which was successful enough in movie theaters that other German filmmakers made movies with similar premises. For proof you need not to look further than at the German film The Wave (2008) which is based on the 'Third Wave'. Some may suggest that the passion for those experiments, that all were conducted in the US, is because most of them were conducted in order to give people an understanding as to how the German Nazis could be the cruel beings that they were in the Second World War.
• While Downfall was relatively successful — if wildly controversial even before shooting began — in its native Germany, the international cultural phenomenon that is "Hitler Rants" is lost on most Germans as they simply cannot tune out the audio while reading the subtitles.
• Convoy has faded into obscurity in the USA but always been a Cult Classic in Germany—to the point where Rubber Duck's original black Mack has been exported to Bavaria.

Greece and Cyprus

• 300 was a massive hit in Greece and cultural neighbor Cyprus, probably because it depicted Greeks as total badasses. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't have gone over well in Iran, even if it hadn't been banned.
• Bud Spencer and Terence Hill are very popular in Greece, particularly amongst those aged 30-40. In the 80s, their films were shown on TV almost daily, while Bud Spencer appeared in commercials for a very popular brand of chewing gum. The movies are still shown quite often, though not to the extent they were in the 80s.

Hungary

• Hungarians feverishly adore Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, to the point that any criticism regarding their films is met with immense backlash. Their films are frequently reran on TV on about a dozen different channels on any given day. They are considered mainstream, A-list film stars far surpassing any Hollywood celebrity and their film quotes are used in daily discourse. You can buy Spencer & Hill books, food items, toys, video games, you name it. There is even a Bud Spencer statue in the capital. The reason behind this ridiculous obsession is the wide publicity their movies received during the Communist era, when most film imports were blocked from the country. Hungarians have even made a series of "imitation" films, starring, directed and written by Bud Spencer's Hungarian dubbing actor and lookalike István Bujtor.
• No Christmas go by in Hungary without at least one of the Home Alone movies on TV, and most people who grew up in the nineties or earlier can quote several lines á la Memetic Mutation.
• The John Landis movie Oscar is immensely popular in Hungary. Practically everyone who at some point owned a TV set can quote several parts from it, and it is one of the better known roles of Tim Curry among local audiences (just think about that for a minute). It might be because classic French-style comedy theatre has a huge tradition in Hungarian literature.
• The Spanish Torrente films, starring the fictional sleazy, corrupt, racist, out-of-shape, lowlife former cop José Luis Torrente are very popular in Hungary. It might be because of Superlative Dubbing or because the film's over the top, cartoony, vulgar and extremely politically incorrect jokes are perfectly in line with the audience's sense of humor. It's also been suggested that different viewers either ironically or genuinely relate to the scumbag main character and his pitiful way of life in a similar way as the films' native Spanish audience, regardless of whether they realize he's meant to be an exaggerated negative stereotype mocking the type of people he represents.

Italy

• The term "Spaghetti Western" comes from the large number of cowboy movies made in Italy, of all places — despite the fact that the Western genre is firmly rooted in American history. Also, one of Italy's most famous and loved comic series is Tex, featuring the eponymous hero Tex Willer as a ranger in a typical western setting. It has been running uninterrupted since 1948.
• Ghostbusters (1984) was tremendously popular in the United States (it's still one of the highest-grossing comedies of all time), but it apparently made an even bigger mark in Italy. Long after the film had taken on nostalgic value in its home country, there was still a pizzeria in Rome named Acchiappafantasmi (the name by which Ghostbusters went in Italian markets), apparently for no other reason than because the owners of the establishment either liked the movie or just liked the name. Their specialty was a "ghost pizza", with olives placed on a pizza "face" to simulate eyes and a moaning mouth.
• Since 1997, Trading Places is always shown in Italy on Christmas Eve, to the point that Italians joke "it's not Christmas without Trading Places".
• Bohemian Rhapsody was released late in Italy and yet managed to become 2018's most seen and highest grossing film there. To put that into perspective, in the UK, Queen's home country, the film was less successful than Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Even though the reason may be the many creative liberties taken with the band's story.
• Young Frankenstein has become a cult classic in Italy and is by far Mel Brooks' most well-known and appreciated movie there. It mostly stems from its fantastic adaptation that turned many of the film's quotes into popular sayings while still keeping the original's tone. They even re-released the film in theaters for its 40th anniversary and the special edition boxset for the occasion sold really well, being behind only the United States.
• Life Stinks is usually considered one of Brooks's lesser movies, but when it came out in Italy it topped the box office.
• Miracle of Marcelino was an absolute smash hit in Italy; it's been showed (dubbed) so many times over the years that many have it for an Italian movie. The Italians even brought the original child actor Pablito Calvo as a Dancing Bear to act opposite local comedian Totò in the otherwise independent, Italian language film Totò e Marcellino (1958) - where Calvo's character was also an orphan named after his most famous role. There was also a remake in 1991, moving the setting to Medieval Italy. This enduring popularity contrasts with its native Spain, where while very successful when it came out, it slowly became a niche religious film; most people today would consider it a mark of a bygone time at best, an ugly reminder of the poverty, repression, and isolation after the Spanish Civil War, or Francoist propaganda at worst.

Poland

• Top Secret! was quite a (bootleg) VHS hit behind the iron curtain (ex. in Poland), though it was received in a way unexpected by its authors (who aimed at mocking American cold-war stereotypes). The same goes for Terry Gilliam's Brazil, which was intended to convey a leftist message but was instead seen as a metaphor for a communist regime (btw. Polish director Piotr Szulkin had used similar imagery in his 1981 film War of Worlds - The Next Century, which was exactly this).
• Home Alone is a cult classic in Poland. It is a national tradition to show it every year on TV at Christmas. When it had been announced it wouldn't be on in 2010... cue a flood of angry letters from viewers, and it was broadcast. This case can be roughly described as an unholy mix of Nostalgia Filter, Narm Charm and Memetic Mutation.
• The live-action adaptation of the French comic Asterix, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, released in 2002, is still incredibly popular in Poland: young people who grew up watching it in their childhood still make edits and memes about some scenes, with the scene referred to as the "scribe's monologue" being a popular "pasta" (a short story often copy-pasted into unrelated forum treads or comment chains). It's likely popular because it's genuinely funny, most Poles are familiar with the source material to at least some degree, and the Polish dub is remarkably well-done, with a lot of localization gags and lively voice acting.

Russia and the Soviet Union

• French actor Gérard Depardieu is popular in Russia. His friend Vladimir Putin even granted him Russian citizenship, and he was offered to become Minister of Culture of an Oblast. He politely declined the latter.
• Bollywood films were wildly popular in '60s-'80s Soviet Union, being *MUCH* more easily available than Hollywood blockbusters and given wide releases. Even in modern Russian pop culture, the Luke, I Am Your Father trope is more closely associated with Indian cinema (where sudden "I am your brother/sister/aunt/etc." revelations were all too common) than with Star Wars. And up to this day, there are separate sections of Indian films in large media stores.
• Red Heat is still very popular in Russia, because of its unintentional comedy value. In general, action movies featuring the actor were watched on bootleg VHS by just about the entire male population of Russia in The '90s, and the particularly good ones (like Commando, Predator or, naturally, The Terminator) maintain a cult following.
• Russians loved the Western genre and developed their own take on it, dubbed the Ostern — the Ural Mountains were the equivalent to Monument Valley, the Volga River for the Rio Grande, and the Turkic peoples for the Mexicans or American Indians.
• John Carter was a box office failure in the United States but set records in Russia.
• The critical and box office disaster Movie 43 managed to be a hit in Russia, of all places (possibly due to the star power).
• Jessica Simpson's film Major Movie Star, which didn't even rate a theatrical release in the U.S., was a #1 box office hit in Russia.
• The Italian movie series Fantozzi (detailing the misadventures of an Italian salaryman put up to eleven for comedic purpose) and the short stories that the movies adapt are really popular in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, going back to the Cold War.
• EuroTrip bombed in the US but is considered a cult classic in Russia, on par with the first American Pie. Many Russians who grew up or went to school in the early 2000s still smile when they hear "Fluggegecheimen" or "Vandersexxx", and remember stuff like "Scotty doesn't know" song, "Hitler boy", "Mi scusi", a nude beach full of dicks, or "Dear sweet mother of God... we're in Eastern Europe!"
• Many Russians remember the infamous bike-riding scene from the German sex comedy Mädchen, Mädchen (2001). Mädchen, Mädchen, its 2004 sequel Mädchen, Mädchen 2 – Loft oder Liebe, as well as Harte Jungs (2000), its sequel Knallharte Jungs (2002), Swiss film Achtung, fertig, Charlie! (2003) and a French film Sexy Boys (2001) got some degree of popularity (or, in some cases, notoriety) in Russia because they were marketed as sequels/spinoffs to American Pie. Sexy Boys was literally localized as "French Pie", and Achtung, fertig, Charlie! as "Army Pie".
• The Mexican film Yesenia was a blockbuster in the Soviet Union, with over 91 million tickets sold, or more than half of the population at that time.
• Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and Major Payne are very popular in Russia even with very modest success in USA. In fact, the latter film is how most Russians are aware of the story of The Little Engine That Could, and often the only way.
• The Star Wars prequel films tend to be held in much higher regard on Russian-speaking internet, often on par with the original trilogy. This could be chalked down to the fact that most of the former USSR only got introduced to Star Wars during the nineties, and thus saw the prequels without Nostalgia Filter feelings towards the original trilogy, as well as generally well-done dubbing work.
• The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023) was a big success in Russia and got great reviews there. It's due to several factors: a) the story is still quite popular there (the 1978 Soviet miniseries got a modern sequel not too long ago) and b) it's one of the few major Western productions not to have been hit by the embargo of Western media upon Russia due to the sanctions in reaction to the country's mass scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.

Sweden

• Mel Brooks's films have a cult following in Sweden; The Producers was titled Det våras för Hitler (literally "Springtime for Hitler"); his subsequent films are titled Springtime for..., creating an implicit franchise.
• Sweden, for some inexplicable reason, decided that the 1982 film adaptation of Ivanhoe was the ultimate New Year's Day hangover movie, and it was shown on New Years Day for more than three decades consecutively.

Turkey

• In Mexico there is almost an urban legend that El Santo films were big in Europe; he was an icon but the films themselves were soon forgotten except for a niche group. El Santo movies did however have a large following in Turkey. So much that Three Big Men, a movie featuring three famous superheroes had El Santo as one of the "Big Men". There's an El Santo statue outside a movie theater in Istanbul.
• While Kevin Costner may no longer be the star he was in The '90s in his home country, he is huge star in Turkey as of recently. He has been seen in advertisements for Turkish Airlines, his music has sold well there and he even considered taking part in Turkish politics.

Other Europe

• Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films are monumentally popular across continental Europe (mainly its southern, central and eastern territories). The two often worked together, specializing in easy to digest, low-brow action comedies, and East European viewers also latched onto the escapism provided by the exotic places often featured in their works. Over the decades, heaps of nostalgia just added to their cult status. They are viewed as no less than cinematic gods and are arguably the most beloved European cult stars. Fans are often baffled to learn that the duo isn't as famous everywhere else. One interesting caveat though is that people generally prefer their movies dubbed into their local languages, thanks to the added chemistry and comedic value provided by their dubbing actors. Both actors commonly shot films in English, though their voices were often somewhat crudely dubbed over in post. Even hardcore fans tend to regard the English versions of their films hard to watch because of this. In fact, in many "dub vs. subtitles" arguments on European online surfaces, Spencer and Hill films are often singled out by anti-dub people as the only films where they do support dubbing.
• Laurel and Hardy have always been hugely popular in Europe. The heydays of the duo were the 1930s. During the 1940s they made such awful movies that their followers, Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges, became far more popular in the United States. In Europe, due to the Nazi occupation, the audience never saw these movies until after the war. So Laurel & Hardy's best years were still in people's memories when Europe was liberated and thus their popularity never faded away. To this day Laurel & Hardy remain more famous and recognizable in Europe than Abbott & Costello and The Three Stooges, who are way more obscure.
  • Other factors to take into account: Laurel and Hardy have a more universal appeal because they came from silent comedy and only used dialogue sparingly for their gags (many of which worked practically as pantomime), which made their films easier to dub into foreign languages. It probably helped that they were masterminded by an Englishman (Stan Laurel) and that from the beginning they were marketed internationally (many of the early L & H talkies were produced in German, French and Spanish with Stan and Ollie learning their lines phonetically) and made tours to Britain and continental Europe. Indeed, in the twilight years of their career they still did many stage shows in Europe and their last film, Atoll K, was produced in France. The humor of Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges may have been too "American" for European tastes (and that seems to include countries that did not fall under Nazi occupation, like Ireland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland...). In contrast, the Marx Brothers did succeed in becoming cult favourites in many European countries, even if it sometimes took some years after the war.
• The works of Norman Wisdom were the only Western films allowed in Albania under Hoxha, resulting in him becoming an epic cult figure there. British comedian Tony Hawks borrowed him for his quest to reach the top twenty of the music charts somewhere in the world (so he'd no longer be a One-Hit Wonder, having had a novelty hit in the UK); Big In Albania by Tony Hawks, Norman Wisdom and Tim Rice reached number 18.
• From the pirated VHS of the Communist 1980s to the TV screens and well after 2000, The Blue Lagoon and Return to the Blue Lagoon have been wildly popular in Romania among women of all ages and social classes, from high school teenagers to mature ladies and down to grandmothers, and even some men. Every single comment the Almighty Google can find from the English-speaking countries treats them as the absolute most obvious kitsch in the history of cinema. The former received harsh critical reviews and was a box office disappointment but not a flop, but was enough to kill the once promising career of Randal Kleiser as a film director. The latter received even harsher reviews and was a true Box Office Bomb.
• Alien³ was poorly received in the United States, with many fans considering it to be the worst entry in the franchise (at least until Alien: Resurrection came along). But in some European countries, Alien 3 is considered to be the best film in the series.
• Battleship notably made over $200 million overseas before opening in the US. While the film was largely ignored in America, European markets such as the UK helped it make four times more overseas than it did in the US. This might be because the movie had an Audience-Alienating Premise for Americans: it was based on a board game, and the sheer absurdity of making a movie out of a plotless toy made Americans turn away in droves before it even came out. Outside of the USA, the original "Battleship" board game is either unknown or is known by a different name, so overseas audiences were more easily able to view the movie at face value.
• The film adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities became a cult classic in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, because of Adaptation Displacement; the main reason the movie got such a negative reception in the U.S.A. is the number of deviations from the book, which is well known in the U.S.A., but obscure in the rest of the world. Its largest success is in the former Yugoslavia, where it's re-run on television multiple times per year.
• Bad Boy Bubby. The director of the film claims that the movie was the second highest-grossing film in Norway in 1995, second only to Batman Forever.
• 1950 Mexican melodrama Un día de vida (A Day in Life) bombed in its homeland, but became the most successful movie of the decade in Yugoslavia. So much so, that it spawned a whole new music genre there (Yu-Mex), which is influenced by Mexican music.
• The Adventures of Ford Fairlane was massively popular on the home-video markets of countries like Norway, Spain and Hungary, and many of the film's catchphrases became embedded into popular consciousness. In the latter two countries, the title character was dubbed by popular comedic musicians, Pablo Carbonell in Spain and Feró Nagy in Hungary, adding a lot of energy to a role that was otherwise heavily slammed by critics and audiences in the States. In Hungary, the film was the most widely circulated VHS on the 90's bootleg video market, and the dub became notorious for its liberal use of off-the-wall profanities — the quote "eszem, faszom megáll" (roughly meaning "this blows my mind and my cock" or "I'll be damned and I'll be fucked") even gained a life of its own in everyday discourse. Feró improvised much of his foul-mouthed dialogue, and as a tribute to the film's cult status, some of his colorful lines later made a return in the 2004 Hungarian action comedy Argo.

Oceania

• Alien Resurrection was a bomb in its native country, but pulled in $100 million overseas, and even has a few fans in Australia.
• The Village People vehicle Can't Stop the Music was a notorious bomb everywhere except Australia, where it was embraced as a fun, family-friendly musical.

In-universe examples

In-Universe Examples

• Atomic Blonde: Played literally straight and even lampshaded during Lorraine’s and Delphine’s first encounter, as people outside the bar got excited over David Hasselhoff’s arrival. Delphine wasn’t amused.
• Played literally in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. The German team's lucky charm of sorts is a photo of David Hasselhoff, and after they are defeated they are bawled out by the man himself.
• In Lost in Translation, it is implied that Bob Harris is a much more popular actor in Japan than he is in America since the last twenty years or so.
• This is Spın̈al Tap ends with the title band, largely washed up in America, becoming spectacularly successful in Japan. This is a reference to the real-life band Cheap Trick, who became a Japanese (and to a lesser extent Latin American) favorite after their American audience dwindled.
• In The Peacemaker, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman try to retrieve a list of records from a German baddie's computer. At first the baddie refuses to give up the password, but after some Torture for Fun and Information, he gives it up. It is "Hasselhoff".
• In Tropic Thunder, an important plot point revolves around action star Tugg Speedman discovering that his drug trafficking captors are huge fans of Simple Jack, Tugg's Oscar Bait film which the American press heralded as one of the worst movies of all time. Of course, this is because Simple Jack is the only movie said drug traffickers have access to.
• In Love & Basketball, Sidra tells Monica about this when they are both playing basketball in Europe. In Europe they are relatively famous and live a good life, but in the U.S. they are nobodies.
• In The Fifth Element, Ruby Rhod has a group of Japanese schoolgirls waiting for autographs aboard the flight to Phloston Paradise.
• The title characters in ¡Three Amigos! were very popular in Germany, with a German antagonist that idolized Ned Nederlander for his gun skills, until he found out about trick photography. When Ned denies this, the German immediately challenges him to a duel to prove whether he really can do it. Ned wins.
• In Spies Like Us, the Soviet soldiers guarding the ICBM love the song "Soul Finger" by the Bar Kays. However, they're not familiar with Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It", which backfires on them during the "negotiations" (read: a cross between Risk and Trivial Pursuit) in the last scene.
• Stan & Ollie is about the post-Hollywoodian career of Laurel and Hardy, when their movie glory days were over. They were still immensely popular in Europe, so they chose to tour there on stage for a while.
• In the 2000 made for TV comedic mystery Murder at the Cannes Film Festival, French Stewart plays Nathan Booth, a relatively unknown actor who visits the Cannes Film Festival and finds out his already small part in a film premiering there has been completely edited out. He's surprised to learn, though, that he is rather popular with the local population, who all comment that his voice is much deeper than they thought. He had previously starred in a (terrible) detective show in the U.S. named LA:MO (short for Los Angeles: Modus Operandi) which had lasted a single season and been largely forgotten. The show had recently played in France and become unexpectedly popular, though the population seemed to think the title was his character's name and kept calling him "Lamo" whenever they recognized him. Later, when he saw his show playing on TV, he also noticed that his lines had been dubbed by someone with a hilariously high pitched voice.
• Book of Love has Sam Claflin as an unsuccessful author who discovers his book became huge in Mexico, mostly because the translator made it Hotter and Sexier.
• Euro Trip: As Scotty and his friends travel across Europe, they find that the song "Scotty Doesn't Know", written and performed by a guy who stole Scotty's girlfriend and then wrote an entire song bragging about it, has become a hit across the Pond, complete with a dance remix that gets played at a nightclub in Bratislava. Scotty is constantly embarrassed by it.
• In Honey Baby, Tom's music was more successful in Europe than in America, where he lived.

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