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His name may have been sounding off alarms in Hollywood and mainstream media a few months ago following a divorce from his wife of seventeen years, Lisa Bonet, who was best known for her long-standing role on The Cosby Show. But Jason Momoa, born Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa, has catapulted into the limelight in recent years with his portrayal of DC Entertainment's underwater superhero, Aquaman. Beginning his acting career at 19, he broke onto the screen in shows like Baywatch Miami, North Shore, and a minor role in the family comedy, The Johnson's Family Vacation, starring Cedric The Entertainer and Solange Knowles. His reprisal in Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom is expected to be released in March 2023. But until then, here are ten of the highest-grossing movies by Jason Momoa.
Aquaman
Out of all the supporting and leading roles that Jason Momoa has had throughout his career, the one which set him on the path to overnight superstardom was DC Comic's Aquaman, released in 2018. Momoa played the lead character, Arthur Curry, a king in the making who was birthed from the union of a human, Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison), and an underwater Atlantean Queen named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) after she fled an arranged underwater marriage. She returns to the idea kingdom and leaves her half-breed son, Arthur, in the care of her advisor, Nudios Vulko (William Dafoe), who trains him to become a skilled and powerful warrior. But the trouble isn't far off as the present king and Arthur's younger half-brother, Orma Marius (Patrick Wilson), plans to destroy the surface world through ocean pollution. Arthur goes on to fight a series of rivals to establish his place as the Atlantean king. The film was an instant success, grossing $1.143 billion worldwide.
Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Momoa had been cast in a few popular television series while on the come-up, the likes of Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones, although, or the latter, his character died an early death and so he would no longer be cast in the show. But before his major breakthrough role in 2018's Aquaman, there was a build-up to the DC superhero character in the 2016 DC Entertainment film, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The superhero action film surrounds the epic battle between Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill). The film also has appearances from Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Lex Luthor (Jessie Eisenberg), Anatoli Knyazev (Callan Mulvey), and a minor role from Aquaman (Jason Momoa). On a budget of $300 million, the film was a financial success, grossing $872.3 million at the box office.
Justice League
Momoa's Aquaman character became a bit more pronounced in 2018 with yet another DC Comics superhero film, Justice League. The film follows DC's most celebrated superheroes, namely Diana ad Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Bruce Wayne as Batman (Ben Affleck), Barry Allen as The Flash (Ezra Miller), Victor Stone as Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and a reluctant Aquaman (Jason Momoa) as they just unite in the wake of Superman's death to stop the evil Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) and his legion of Parademons from combining all the Mother Boxes scattered throughout the earth. Once they are gathered, it will cause the Earth to terraform into the toxic atmosphere of Steppenwolf's world. Luckily for the band of superheroes, they beat Steppenwolf in reuniting the Mother Boxes, and Batman uses it to resurrect Superman. All's well that ends well. The film also ended with a gross of $655.9 million worldwide.
Dune
In 2021, Momoa would go on to star in his most recent film production, the science fiction film called Dune. Created as an adaptation of the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert of the same name, Dune, as well as an adaptation of the critical failure of David Lynch's 1984 film. The setting for the film is the far future and surrounds the life of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet). Jane's mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) is instructed to bear a daughter in keeping with traditional customs, but instead bears a son, Paul. Throughout his life, he is often terrified by visions of the future. Learning of this, his father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) send him to be trained by Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) in combat warfare as he goes on to fulfill his destiny with the girl of the dreams, literally, Chani (Zendaya). Full of action and intrigue, the film grossed $399.8 million.
The LEGO Movie 2
In 2019, one year after his epic release as the lead character in Aquaman, Momoa would go on to lend his voice to The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, the fourth franchise in the Lego Movie series. He again reprises his role as Aquaman, while Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) and his girlfriend, Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) ravage the city because of war Duplo aliens. Emmet's friends are then kidnapped by a mini-doll called General Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) and takes them across the galaxy to Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), where she brainwashed them with the illusions of her world, even attempting to marry Batman (Will Arnett) in order to merge the Duplo and Lego worlds and prevent "armamageddon." Along with the adventure-comedy were the voices of Charlie Day, Allison Brie, and Will Ferrell. It ended up grossing $190.1 million against a $99 million budget.
Conan The Barbarian
Still fairly early on in his career, Momoa landed another lead role in Conan The Barbarian in 2011, a sword and sorcery film taken from the original film of the same name in 1982 featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones. However, the new interpretation of the film was not as financially successful as the 1982 original. The film follows Conan (Jason Momoa), a skilled and violent warrior who is the only survivor from his village after it is attacked by a warlord named Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) and his daughter Marique (Rose McGowan), who steals the piece of a sorcery-crafted mask from Conan's father, Corin (Ron Perlman), and murdering him. Conan swears revenge for his father's death as Zym goes in search of the rest of the mask's pieces, in addition to Tamara (Rachel Nichols), a pure virgin from the Acheronian bloodline who Zym intends to sacrifice. Despite an in-depth plot, it grossed only $63.3 million against a $90 million budget, making it a box office bomb.
Bullet To The Head
As stated previously, the Braven star's road to Hollywood success hasn't been a red carpet experience coated with dandelions and rose petals. As any movie celebrity will agree, there are ups and downs along the journey, and Momoa isn't the exception to that rule. In 2013, he teamed up with Sylvester Stallone in the action film, Bullet To The Head. The film surrounds a Washington D.C. cop, Detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang), and a hitman named Jimmy Bobo (Sylvester Stallone) who are forced to partner up in order to bring down a crooked businessman named Robert Nkomo Morel, who has a string of crooked cops in his payroll, making it harder for Kwon to bust him. Adding insult to injury, Morel's assassin, Keegan (Jason Momoa) is has it out for both Kwon and Bobo. Against a $55 million budget, the film only grossed $22.59 million at the box office.
Braven
Jason Momoa is a family man in real life, at least until January 2022 when he divorced his wife, Lisa Bonet. However, during the making of Braven in 2018, they were technically still a family. Braven is an action thriller that centers around Joe Braven, a logging company owner married to Stephanie Braven (Jill Wagner) who lives with their daughter, Charlotte (Sasha Rosoff). After Joe's father, Linden, suffers brain trauma during a bar fight, Stephanie suggests that Joe and his father spend time at the family's remote wooden cabin. However, unbeknownst to them, Charlotte has tagged along. Meanwhile, Weston (Brendan Fletcher), Joe's co-worker, is asked by a cocaine trafficker named Hallett (Zahn McClarnon) to recruit more truck drivers to assist his boss, Kassan (Garret Dillahunt) in his drug activities. Weston then loses control of a log truck carrying the cocaine, and they decide to hide it at Joe's family cabin. Linden (Stephen Lang) and Joe engage in a violent showdown with the drug dealers, while Joe attempts to safeguard his daughter. While the film sounds exhilarating just by reading the plot, it only pulled in $826,472 at the box office.
Once Upon A Time In Venice
Blessed with a stocky and muscular physique, Momoa quickly established himself as an action star, as is the theme in most of his movies. Automatically, this means that he collaborates with other action junkies, chief of who is Die Hard's, Bruce Willis. In 2017, the two starred together in Once Upon A Time In Venice, an action-comedy that focuses on the life of an easygoing private detective named Steve Ford (Bruce Willis). He makes some unwanted enemies with a drug gang after performing a favor for his friend, Dave Phillips (John Goodman). The gang's leader, Spyder (Jason Momoa), gets revenge on Steve by stealing his beloved dog. In order to get his dog back, Spyder orders him to run a series of dangerous and life-threatening errands in the Venice area of Los Angeles. While the cast of actors is decent, the film only grossed $399,166.
The Bad Batch
Again in a 2017 dystopian thriller film named The Bad Batch, it begins with a young woman named Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) who is being exiled from the modern world to the outskirts of a Texas desert for being deemed unfit for society, making her a part of the "bad batch," hence the name of the movie. Once in the badlands of the desert, American laws no longer apply and neither does her citizenship. She is then almost immediately kidnapped by two women in a golf cart who turn out to be cannibals after dismembering her arm and leg for food. She escapes and is found by a mute hermit (Jim Carrey) who takes her to Comfort, a place led by The Dream (Keanu Reeves). The hermit heals her and fits her with a prosthetic leg. She sees a woman and a little girl eating from the garbage and shoots the woman dead but kidnaps the child. The child belongs to Miami Man (Jason Momoa) who orders her to find his daughter. She does and they reunite, leading Arlen to cleave to Miami Man in the desert instead of staying in Comfort. The film grossed only $182,226.
Sources: vanityfair.com, rogerebert.com, hollywoodreporter.com, nytimes.com