This weekend Clint Eastwood’s The Mule will cross the $100 million mark at the domestic box office. It’s a mulestone! It’s hard to overstate how impressive this showing is: A movie about an 80-something codger driving around the country became one of the biggest hits of the year in relation to its cost despite being mostly dismissed by critics and getting no love at the Golden Globes or the Oscars. The success of The Mule is as remarkable as the success of Crazy Rich Asians.
It seems safe to say that Eastwood is the most enduring movie star in the entire history of the medium. Compare, for instance, John Wayne. Pretty long career. It got rolling with his first hit, 1939’s Stagecoach, and Wayne was still starring in blockbusters 30 years later, with his crowning achievement as Rooster Cogburn in 1969’s True Grit. He made a couple more movies in the 1970s before he died at 72 in 1979.
Eastwood’s career as a movie star has gone on far longer. With The Mule, he has now had a string of $100 million hits (in inflation-adjusted dollars) dating back 51 years, all the way to his first one, A Fistful of Dollars, in 1967. The chart below (from BoxOfficeMojo.com, with The Mule‘s numbers through January 23) is wild: Twenty-five hit movies. Twenty-five! In six different decades! And several more that fell just shy of the $100 million mark. There is no one like Clint. Ever.
Clint Eastwood Movie Grosses, Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation
| Rank | Title (click to view) | Studio | Adjusted Gross | Unadjusted Gross | Release |
| 1 | Every Which Way But Loose | WB | $328,771,000 | $85,196,485 | 12/20/78 |
| 2 | Any Which Way You Can | WB | $237,288,700 | $70,687,344 | 12/17/80 |
| 3 | In the Line of Fire | Col. | $223,164,900 | $102,314,823 | 7/9/93 |
| 4 | Unforgiven | WB | $220,246,200 | $101,157,447 | 8/7/92 |
| 5 | Magnum Force | WB | $202,884,200 | $39,768,000 | 12/25/73 |
| 6 | Dirty Harry | WB | $196,886,800 | $35,976,000 | 12/22/71 |
| 7 | The Enforcer | WB | $196,014,600 | $46,236,000 | 12/22/76 |
| 8 | The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | UA | $188,877,500 | $25,100,000 | 12/29/67 |
| 9 | Sudden Impact | WB | $187,900,400 | $67,642,693 | 12/9/83 |
| 10 | Gran Torino | WB | $179,352,400 | $148,095,302 | 12/12/08 |
| 11 | Escape from Alcatraz | Par. | $154,697,200 | $43,000,000 | 6/22/79 |
| 12 | Space Cowboys | WB | $151,510,800 | $90,464,773 | 8/4/00 |
| 13 | The Bridges of Madison County | WB | $148,458,600 | $71,516,617 | 6/2/95 |
| 14 | Firefox | WB | $143,461,100 | $46,708,276 | 6/18/82 |
| 15 | Million Dollar Baby | WB | $141,602,100 | $100,492,203 | 12/15/04 |
| 16 | The Outlaw Josey Wales | WB | $134,814,100 | $31,800,000 | 6/30/76 |
| 17 | Tightrope | WB | $129,385,900 | $48,143,579 | 8/17/84 |
| 18 | For a Few Dollars More | UA | $112,875,000 | $15,000,000 | 5/10/67 |
| 19 | A Fistful of Dollars | UA | $109,112,500 | $14,500,000 | 1/18/67 |
| 20 | The Gauntlet | WB | $106,961,600 | $26,414,658 | 12/21/77 |
| 21 | Pale Rider | WB | $105,334,500 | $41,410,568 | 6/28/85 |
| 22 | Thunderbolt and Lightfoot | UA | $104,786,600 | $21,700,000 | 5/24/74 |
| 23 | Heartbreak Ridge | WB | $101,557,300 | $42,724,017 | 12/5/86 |
| 24 | City Heat | WB | $100,537,700 | $38,348,988 | 12/7/84 |
| 25 | Absolute Power | Sony | $98,500,400 | $50,068,310 | 2/14/97 |
| 26 | The Mule | WB | $98,122,800 | $98,122,805 | 12/14/18 |
| 27 | Paint Your Wagon | Par. | $92,207,800 | $14,500,000 | 10/15/69 |
| 28 | The Dead Pool | WB | $83,276,600 | $37,903,295 | 7/15/88 |
| 29 | Bronco Billy | WB | $81,456,800 | $24,265,659 | 6/11/80 |
| 30 | High Plains Drifter | Uni. | $80,096,600 | $15,700,000 | 8/22/73 |
| 31 | Hang ’em High | UA | $75,824,400 | $11,000,000 | 8/3/68 |
| 32 | A Perfect World | WB | $67,835,300 | $31,130,999 | 11/24/93 |
| 33 | The Eiger Sanction | Uni. | $62,549,300 | $14,200,000 | 1975 |
| 34 | Play Misty for Me | Uni. | $58,010,900 | $10,600,000 | 11/12/71 |
| 35 | The Rookie (1990) | WB | $46,244,400 | $21,633,874 | 12/7/90 |
| 36 | Where Eagles Dare | MGM | $45,150,000 | $7,100,000 | 3/12/69 |
| 37 | Blood Work | WB | $40,775,000 | $26,235,081 | 8/9/02 |
| 38 | Trouble with the Curve | WB | $40,747,400 | $35,763,137 | 9/21/12 |
| 39 | Joe Kidd | Uni. | $33,623,500 | $6,330,000 | 7/14/72 |
| 40 | Kelly’s Heroes | MGM | $30,294,200 | $5,200,000 | 6/23/70 |
| 41 | True Crime | WB | $29,595,900 | $16,649,768 | 3/19/99 |
| 42 | Two Mules for Sister Sara | Uni. | $29,420,300 | $5,050,000 | 6/16/70 |
| 43 | Pink Cadillac | WB | $27,621,100 | $12,143,484 | 5/26/89 |
| 44 | Coogan’s Bluff | Uni. | $21,437,600 | $3,110,000 | 10/2/68 |
| 45 | Honky Tonk Man | WB | $13,775,300 | $4,484,991 | 12/17/82 |
| 46 | The Beguiled | Uni. | $6,020,000 | $1,100,000 | 3/31/71 |
| 47 | White Hunter, Black Heart | WB | $4,950,800 | $2,319,124 | 9/14/90 |