The Incredible Box Office Feat Only Achieved By Sylvester Stallone & Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford's first feature film was an uncredited role as a bellhop in the 1966 James Coburn crime thriller "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round." He was 24. It's wild to think that Ford, when he was 80, also starred in the 2023 blockbuster "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," which was set in 1969. The elderly Indiana Jones, if he was a movie fan, could have seen the film debut of Harrison Ford.

Sylvester Stallone's first feature film came in 1969, when he was 23. He played an uncredited extra in a film called "The Square Root." Indeed, for the first three years of his career, Stallone mostly played uncredited roles, turning up in films like "What's Up, Doc?," "Bananas," and "Klute." Stallone doesn't have a career wraparound like Ford's above, but he was recently the subject of "Sly," a documentary about his career.  

Both Stallone and Ford appeared in one film together: 2014's "The Expendables 3," a film that used casting as a gimmick. All of the "Expendables" movies have little going for them other than their enormous casts of action-hero celebrities, and the gimmick reached far enough for part 3 to incorporate a huge star like Ford. 

Of course, Stallone and Ford are two of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. When they're not headlining blockbusters, or just being generally visible at high-end Hollywood awards events, they are reliving their lengthy cinematic legacies, talking about or even revisiting their most popular roles. 

They are also the only two actors, to date, who have had starring roles in opening-at-#1 blockbusters six decades in a row. Both actors had #1 hits in the 1970s through the 2020s. 

It can't be understated how big John G. Avidlsen's boxing movie "Rocky" was when it came out in 1976. Written by Stallone, and made for a modest budget of $1.1 million, "Rocky" went on to make $225 million at the box office and get 10 Academy Award nominations. It ended up winning three Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing. "Rocky" also changed the way sports movies were made, providing a template that filmmakers are following to this day. It's the best film in a long series of hits. 

The following year, Harrison Ford played a charming starship pilot named Han Solo in George Lucas' sci-fi thriller "Star Wars," a film few people know anything about before it was released. Made for an impressive $11 million, "Star Wars" earned over $775 million at the box office, making it one of the biggest hits of all time. It was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, but lost in all those categories to Woody Allen's "Annie Hall." "Star Wars" became a brand, and the property has said to have earned $68.7 billion since its inception.

In 1981, Ford first appeared as another notable legacy character, playing the 1930s archeologist adventurer Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. in Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark." That $20 million film made almost $390 million. 

Stallone likewise launched another legacy character with John Rambo, the main character of the moody 1982 pro-veteran movie "First Blood." That film was a hit, but it wasn't the same type of blockbuster as George P. Cosmatos' ultra-violent "Rambo: First Blood Part II" in 1985. The $25.5 million movie, perhaps tapping into the subconscious of Reagan's America, earned over $300 million. 

And the hits just kept on coming.

In 1993, Stallone starred in Renny Harlin's "Die-Hard"-on-a-mountaintop actioner "Cliffhanger," a $70 million movie that earned $255 million. Ford, that same year, starred in Andrew Davis' "The Fugitive," an adaptation of the 1963 TV series. "Cliffhanger" wasn't an awards-bait kind of movie, but "The Fugitive" was up for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. 

In 2001, Stallone re-teamed with Harlin for the race car movie "Driven," which Stallone actually wrote. "Driven" was panned by critics, and even earned several Razzie nominations, and it's even considered a bomb, making only about $55 million on a $94 million budget. None of this stopped "Driven" from opening at #1 at the box office, making $12 million. Ford, meanwhile, returned to the role of Indiana Jones in 2008 with Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." That film took $185 million to make, and it's usually lambasted by fans, but it opened at #1, and earned over $786 million. 

2010 handed Stallone a big hit with "The Expendables," another film he wrote, and that starred multiple 1980s-era action stars. The $80 million film earned about $275 million. Stallone was banking on his action legacy, and it worked. Ford, meanwhile, did the same thing in 2015, returning to play Han Solo in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," one of the highest-grossing films of all time. 

In the '20s, both actors had bomb-like hits. In 2021, James Gunn's $185 million superhero flick "The Suicide Squad" only earned $169 million at the box office, a victim of the peak Covid era. Stallone played the voice of King Shark in that film, and, because it technically opened at #1, counts as one of the actor's hits. Likewise, Harrison Ford's 2023 film "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is also a bomb, mostly because the film cost $387 million to make. It still opened at number one, and of course, Ford most recently was the best part of "Captain America: Brave New World," another number one movie.

That's almost 60 years of blockbusters for both of them.