With more than two decades of success under its belt, it’s no question that Dirty Dancing is a hit. But in order to see how much of a hit the movie is, let’s look at the numbers. Although it only opened at number four in the box-office rankings for the weekend of Aug. 21, 1987—Stakeout came in first, followed by Born in East L.A. and Can’t Buy Me Love—the film took in $63.4 million domestically over the course of its 19 weeks of original release, according to Box Office Mojo. But that’s only a small part of its worldwide gross of just under $214 million—a major profit for a movie that cost a mere $6 million to make. Dirty Dancing was the first-ever big theatrical release for its production company, Vestron, and that was the most the company could afford at the time; Vestron’s stock only saw major growth after the movie began to rake in the money. The company went on to distribute treasures like 1988’s Earth Girls are Easy before it became mired in bankruptcy proceedings in 1990.
The movie’s soundtrack has a similar story. The album, which includes five oldies and eight original songs, was made for under $200,000 and sold more than a million copies in a little more than a month. It kept Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson out of the Billboard chart’s top spot in November of 1987, and went platinum 11 times with more than 42 million copies sold since its release.
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