Every Jon Favreau-Directed Movie, Ranked According To Box Office Mojo
Jon Favreau is one of the most recognizable actors in the world, even though he might not technically be considered an A-list star. The actor has featured in eight movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Tony Stark's security guard, Happy. But what some people might not know is that he's just as much of a director as he is an actor.
In fact, Favreau is one of the most successful directors working in Hollywood today. He might have had a couple of setbacks and bombs earlier in his career, but the filmmaker has since hit a stride where he can seemingly do no wrong. In fact, the director has grossed more money at the box office in total than the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
9 Made (2001) - $5.48 Million
In 1996, Favreau wrote Swingers, a buddy comedy that has become something of a cult classic. The movie made less than $5 million worldwide, but it still managed to have some success through word of mouth years later. Made is Favreau's follow-up movie and directorial debut, and it had a similar box office take.
Unfortunately, Made doesn't have anywhere near the stature that Swingers does years later, even though it likely deserves it too. Made follows two aspiring but dim-witted boxers who become a part of a money-laundering scheme and get too involved in a criminal underworld. Its dark comedy lands just as well as Swingers, but it was a box office disaster and probably hasn't made much from syndication sales either.
8 Chef (2014) - $48.4 Million
Chef is worlds apart from where Favreau first started with his directing career. Where the filmmaker was directing Pulp Fiction-light kind of movies in the late-90s and early 2000s, he was making uplifting and positive movies about the food truck business a decade and a half later. Chef is one of those fantastic and droolingly-beautiful movies where the food is the star, and while food isn't as bankable as an A-list actor, it was still a modest success at the box office. As the movie had a low budget of $11 million, $48 million is nothing to sniff at.
It has picked up a much wider audience on Netflix and there is even a spin-off documentary series, The Chef Show, that sees Favreau and Chef Roy Choy, who was the producer on the movie and prepared the food that's seen in it, cook food together.
7 Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005) - $65 Million
It seemed like there was an untapped market for a family adventure movie in the same vein as Jumanji in the 2000s, especially as Jumanji was a smash hit, but Zathura failed to find an audience. The movie essentially lifts the premise of Jumanji and gives it a science fiction skin, and the film is full of dazzling special effects and well-crafted storytelling.
One of the things that Favreau understands best as a director is how to make a movie truly resonate with kids. He achieved that with so many movies from Elf and the live-action The Jungle Book, and to an extent, he achieved that with Zathura too. Unfortunately, the movie only made a hair over $65 million, which was exactly its production budget, and it's considered a box office disaster.
6 Cowboys & Aliens (2011) - $175 Million
Just like Zathura, Cowboys & Aliens is a sci-fi adventure movie that the whole family can enjoy. But, unfortunately, the 2011 movie has more in common with the Jumanji spin-off than it'd like. The movie was unfortunately another box office bomb for the director, but on a much larger scale. Zathura's $65 million budget might seem high, but it's dwarfed by Cowboys & Aliens' inflated budget of $163 million.
Between the extremely expensive-looking special effects and the sheer amount of A-list actors, including Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, it's easy to see where the studio sunk its money. But the problem stems from the script, as it just simply wasn't liked by critics or audiences, making it one of the most expensive flops of all time.
5 Elf (2003) - $223 Million
Elf was Jon Favreau's first major success, and it was an incredible jump early in his career that happens too rarely. The director went from Made, which could barely scrape together $5 million, to the surprise Christmas hit. But while the 2003 release is a holiday movie down to the core and a film that kids can love, it's one of the best comedies by an MCU director too.
Elf has the kind of humor that college students love, and that was the secret to the film's success. But what makes it even more of a success is that it had a relatively low budget of $33 million, and it hugely over-performed and outdid expectations at the box office.
4 Iron Man (2008) - $586 Million
World-building is another of Favreau's skills that few other creators can rival. He went on to expand the world of Star Wars with the Disney+ shows The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, but he started out building the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man is the very first MCU movie, and the seeds were being planted for a shared movie universe under viewers' noses without any of them even realizing it.
While everybody looks at the Marvel super-producer Kevin Feige as the man to thank for the MCU, if anybody deserves almost as much credit, it's Favreau. If Iron Man failed, the fault would have lied with Favreau, but it ended up being a huge success, making close to $600 million. But, funnily enough, if any Marvel movie grossed that much money today, it'd be seen as a crushing failure for the studio.
3 Iron Man 2 (2010) - $624 Million
Iron Man 2 isn't considered anywhere near as good as its predecessor in terms of quality, and there are many ways Iron Man 2 has aged poorly. However, this is the MCU machine already at work, and it's mostly thanks to Favreau's world-building that helped it reach $624 million.
Only huge film buffs and comic book fans really knew what was being hinted at in the Iron Man post-credits scene, but in 2010, there were so many rumors about an Avengers movie. Iron Man 2 doubled down on the universe-building by introducing S.H.I.E.L.D. and Black Widow. That, along with Robert Downey Jr.'s unique superhero attitude, had fans showing up to multiplexes in droves at the time.
2 The Jungle Book (2016) - $966 Million
Disney has made a trend out of developing live-action remakes of its classic animated movies, and there's no sign of the trend slowing down. 2016's The Jungle Book is arguably the most fascinating one of the lot and the first to think outside the box with the source material, putting a unique spin on it while still being faithful.
This led to a brilliant gangster-like portrayal of King Louie voiced by Christopher Walken, which was completely unforgettable. And in many ways, 2016's The Jungle Book is better than the original. The film came very close to grossing $1 billion, which would have been an incredible feat given that there are no bankable stars in the lead role.
1 The Lion King (2019) - $1.662 Billion
After the huge success he had with The Jungle Book, Favreau adapted another classic Disney animated movie into live-action. Unfortunately, unlike The Jungle Book, The Lion King didn't exactly think outside the box with its reimagining. The film is as close to a shot-for-shot remake as it could possibly get, and it was negatively received by critics.
However, what does it matter when the movie snowballed to an unbelievable worldwide gross of $1.6 billion? The Lion King was a phenomenal success that even Disney was probably surprised by. But given that it was bolstered by starring roles from megastars Beyonce and Donald Glover, and it even had an accompanying album by the former, it was almost to be expected.