2000 Box Office Flop Ranked Among the ‘Greatest Movies of the 21st Century'
One of the greatest movies of this century was beloved by critics but fizzled at the box office. Collider has ranked the 2000 comedy-drama film Almost Famous one of the greatest movies of the 21st century. The Cameron Crowe film, which was semi-autobiographical, followed a teen journalist (Patrick Fugit) hired to follow the fictional band Stillwater for a cover story for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s. It featured a star-studded cast with Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Frances McDormand.
Collider described Almost Famous as "a remarkable character study across multiple creative facets of the music industry that is powered by sensitive and sharp writing and outstanding performances."
"Funny and touching, but also poignant and considered, Almost Famous is an immersive gem about the mania and magic of music and the people who make it," the review concluded.
'Almost Famous' received positive reviews but failed at the box office
Writer and director Crowe had high hopes for Almost Famous. In an interview with Empire shortly before its release, he said he had one goal for the film. "I want people to leave the movie remembering, feeling a little bit of the way they feel when they hear a song that they feel was written just for them," he shared. ‘That was what I was chasing."
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Reviews were positive. Roger Ebert gave Almost Famousa four-star review and called it "a lovely film." The film was also nominated for four Academy Awards, winning the Oscar for best screenplay for Crowe.
But it didn't do well at the box office. In October 2000, the Los Angeles Times noted that Almost Famous cost $60 million to make and then "failed to find an audience." At the time, it had only grossed $23 million and was expected to cap out at $35 million, which was well below production costs.
"Everybody went to see this rerelease of The Exorcist instead," Crowe told Rolling Stone in 2020. "It wasn't a surprise when the movie didn't do that well in the theater. …It felt like the long arm of 1973 came back to slap us down."
"We were an underdog that gathered support over the years," he added of the film's later popularity.
In 2025, Crowe said Almost Famous was "a love letter to music" and expressed gratitude for seeing his dream come to fruition. "I'm just so grateful that we had the gift of being able to make it," he told People magazine in an interview. "We did whatever it would take to get us to the story that we wanted to tell, which is about loving music. And everybody in that movie loved music."
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This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 10:27 AM.