By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The numbers are staggering: More than $300 million worldwide, from a movie that cost about $5 million. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, out on video and DVD today, is the highest-grossing independent film, and highest-grossing romantic comedy, of all time.

It has been playing in theaters continually for nearly 10 months. It spent days (but no weekends) atop the North American box office chart. It was the No. 1 movie in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Written by star Nia Vardalos based on her one-woman comedy show, the movie came to the screen thanks to the patronage of actors Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, who is half-Greek.

Directed by Joel Zwick, the movie co-stars John Corbett, Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan in the tale of a young woman coming to terms with her old-world family when she falls in love with a handsome non-Greek. All but Corbett will appear in a new CBS series, My Big Fat Greek Life, that debuts at 9:30 p.m. Feb. 24.

Vardalos began her journey from unknown comic to chart-topper when she talked her way on stage at Toronto's Second City while working as a ticket-taker. A regular fell ill and no understudy could be found; Vardalos convinced the director she knew the show well enough to step in. It didn't take her long to get noticed.

"That one night led to my entire career," Vardalos told Venice magazine in 2001, "because the Chicago producers went, `Who's that girl with the nerve?'

"They brought me to the Chicago Second City Theater, where I met my husband. My husband, who got baptized Greek Orthodox, which I wrote the play about that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson saw and decided to make into a movie."

Vardalos moved to Hollywood in 1995. She made a few TV appearances, then started concentrating on developing her own show.

1996

January: She appears at Melrose Theatre in Hollywood in HBO Workspace, a series of talent-development shows sponsored by the cable network.

1997

August: A test version of the show, called My Big Fat Greek Wedding: A True Story, opens at the 99-seat Hudson Avenue Theatre in West Hollywood with a few midweek performances, which she publicized herself.

"I called my mom and said, `I went to church and handed out fliers to my show,'" Vardalos said. "And she said, `Oh, my God! The icons will weep!'

The piece quickly attracts the attention of movie production companies; three approach Vardalos with offers. None wants her to star in the movie. Some want to change the family.

"They said, `People love Italians!' I said, `So do I! This family is Greek.'"

November: Vardalos takes her show to the Acme Comedy Theatre in Los Angele; still a workshop piece, it runs Tuesday nights.

On one of those Tuesdays, Wilson stops by. The next night, she sends her husband to see it. They read the first draft of a screenplay Vardalos has prepared. Within days, they are planning a movie.

1998

January: The one-woman show opens at the Globe Theater in Los Angeles. Wilson is the producer.

2000

August: After more than two years of negotiating, planning and preparation, Hanks and Wilson announce that Wedding is about to begin shooting, with Gary Goetzman as producer.

"Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson or Gary Goetzman could come to me in the middle of the night and go, `Hey, we killed somebody and you have to hide the body.' I'd have to say, `You're right because I owe you,'" Vardalos said.

About the same time, John Corbett is in Toronto shooting Serendipity. He is interested in Wedding, but believes the role has been filled already. One evening, he bumps into Vardalos in a hotel. Within 10 minutes, she has promised him the job.

September: Cameras roll in Toronto.

2001

July: The movie is unveiled in Montreal at Comedia, a film sidebar to the Just For Laughs comedy festival. Vardalos also performs her original stage show, to standing ovations.

2002

April: My Big Fat Greek Wedding opens on the same day as The Scorpion King.

A San Francisco group dubs itself the Greek First Friday Club and launches an e-mail drive to urge Greeks in the first eight cities where the movie has opened to see it immediately.

"They sent out this campaign saying, `Don't sit at home and go to this movie three weeks after it opens, when it's gone from movie theaters,' " Vardalos recalled. "... And people went! They organized groups; churches put buses together."

In its first week, it takes in $822,000 at 108 theaters.

June: The movie is playing in more than 440 theaters and taking in between $2 million and $3 million a week.

August: The movie shows up as in-flight entertainment. (Producers sold the airline rights months earlier, never expecting the movie would still be playing in theaters four months after opening.) The result is a word-of-mouth turbo boost. Within three weeks, box office take jumps from $5 million a week to $17 million, playing at 1,600 theaters.

September: Producer Goetzman predicts a $70 million total by Labor Day; in fact receipts reach $85 million. By the middle of the month, the movie tops $100 million.

November: Receipts cross the $200 million threshold.

2003

January: Less than two weeks from the movie's video debut, it is still showing in more than 1,100 theaters and posting more than $2 million a week in receipts.

The movie has become so popular that some theaters are expected to keep it on screen even after the video arrives.

E-mail mmcgurk@enquirer.com