100 highest-grossing movies of all time 100. The original Lion Kingwas the second-highestgrossing film of 1994 behind Forrest Gump, which was at the time third only tothe initial runs of E.T. Disney movies dominate the list. On an Apple device? [3] After home video income is accounted for, both films have earned over $3billion each. GWIt is not absolutely clear how much Gone with the Wind earned from its initial release. News | [52] However, it is possible this figure has been mistaken for the gross of the 1954 remake which also earned $8,000,000 in North American rentals.[53]. Although the nominal earnings chart is dominated by films adapted from pre-existing properties and sequels, it is headed by Avatar, which is an original work. For example, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice belongs to not only the Batman and Superman franchises, but also to the DC Extended Universe, which is a shared universe. [23], The measuring system for gauging a film's success is based on unadjusted grosses, mainly because historically this is the way it has always been done because of the practices of the film industry: the box-office receipts are compiled by theaters and relayed to the distributor, which in turn releases them to the media. Spielberg became the first director to break his own record when Jurassic Park overtook E.T., and Cameron emulated the feat when Avatar broke the record set by Titanic. [41], Audience tastes were fairly eclectic during the 20th century, but several trends did emerge. James Bond is one example of this. Iron Man 3wasjust the 13th film to reach $400 million domestic in its initial run, and is the highest-grossing non-Avengers film in the MCU overseas with over $805 million. [56], ONThe figure for It Happened One Night is not truly representative of its success: it was distributed as a package deal along with more than two dozen other Columbia films, and the total earnings were averaged out; the true gross would have been much higher.[57]. It was the biggest hit of its kind, and remained in continual distribution until the 1970s when hardcore pornography eventually took over. Latest Updates: News | Daily | Weekend | All Time | International | Showdowns Glossary | User Guide | Help . Check out the top movies at the box office on IMDb. WhileAvengers: Endgame andAvatar recently duked it out for bragging rights as the all-time highest-grossing movie, 2021 surprised everyone to an extent with the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which blew everyone away, setting new records and entertaining fans all over the world even as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc on the industry. It was no slacker overseas, either: WhenReturnfinished its run, onlyTitanichad a greater number outside of the U.S. and Canada. Conditions of Use The first Marvel film released following the massive success of Joss Whedons The Avengers was also the most successful of the individual Iron Man films. Were people stillinterested after the prequels? At the peak of a 3-D reemergence, aided by the filmmakers usual technological gamesmanship (and higher ticket prices), Avatarsseven straight weekends at number 1 led to over $595 million at the North American box office. [73] Gone with the Wind itself may have been briefly overtaken by The Ten Commandments (1956), which closed at the end of 1960 with worldwide rentals of $5860million[76][77] compared to Gone with the Wind's $59million;[78] if it did claim the top spot its tenure there was short-lived, since Gone with the Wind was re-released the following year and increased its earnings to $67million. Since Variety at the time ranked films by their U.S. and Canadian rental, they constructed a hypothetical rental figure for the Cinerama films to provide a basis for comparison to other films in their chart: in the case of This Is Cinerama, the $50million worldwide gross was reconfigured as a $12.5million U.S. rental gross; this is exactly 25% of the amount reported by Cinerama, so Variety's formula seemingly halved the gross to obtain an estimate for the U.S. share, and halved it again to simulate a rental fee. Its $116.1 million start was the sixth-largest movie opening ever at the time and the second-highest for Disney behind the second Pirates film. Distributors would often report the worldwide rental since the higher figure made the film appear more successful, while estimates were limited to performance in North America; therefore it was not unusual for worldwide and North American rentals to be mixed up. Avengers: Endgame (2019) 8.4/10 After just six weeks of release,Endgamewasabout$73 million away from dethroningAvatar substantial ground to make up. Another Marvel movie that is one of the highest grossing movies of all tine, Avengers: Infinity War brings together superheroes Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Spider-Man to defeat their common enemy the mighty Thanos. under which this service is provided to you. It even fell behind the sixthFuriousfilm domestically, but did incredibly well abroad: it was the sixthfilm ever to make a cool billion outside theU.S. and Canada alone. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001). One notable example of this phenomenon is Avatar, which was also released in 3D and IMAX: almost two-thirds of tickets for that film were for 3D showings with an average price of $10, and about one-sixth were for IMAX showings with an average price over $14.50, compared to a 2010 average price of $7.61 for 2D films. and Jurassic Park at the all-time domestic box office. With a worldwide box-office gross of over $2.9 billion, Avatar is proclaimed to be the "highest-grossing" film, but such claims usually refer to theatrical revenues only and do not take into account home video and television income, which can form a significant portion of a film's earnings. All rights reserved. FHSome sources such as The Numbers state that Aloma of the South Seas is the highest grossing film of the year, earning $3million. Transformers: Dark of the Moon Grossed: $1.123 Billion Transformers: Dark of the Moon was released in 2011 and has since grossed an impressive $1.123 billion dollars worldwide. For the list below, weve included global box office performance, as well as domestic, and release date. One by one the recordsfell, leading many to ignore the words if and can and focus instead on when Avatars previous record ($2.787 billion) as the highest-grossing movie would fall. A1The adjusted gross for Avatar includes revenue from the original release and all four reissues. The space epic was only one of two films in 2018-19 to spend 10 straight weeks in thetop 10 (the other beingBlack Panther), and was the seventh MCU film to reach $1 billion at the box office globally. Venice awarded the film itstop prize in the Golden Lion; somecritics were hailing it a masterpiece. Why isnt it even higherin the list? But withAvatar 2 coming soon, the now Disney-owned-and-rebranded 20th Century Studios decided to remind everybody the franchise existed, re-releasing the film in China in March of 2021 and, whether intentional or not, pushing it back into pole position. Also, it is just one of four films on this list to receive a Tomatometer score of 97%. It became just the seventh film to clear a half-billion dollars in domestic box office. We included dollars earned in re-releases, and in each of our descriptions, we look at where the film stood record-wise at the time of its run, and dive into things like critical and audience reception. The following directors have also all directed two films on the chart: Frank Lloyd, King Vidor, Frank Capra, Michael Curtiz, Leo McCarey, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, Guy Hamilton, Mike Nichols, William Friedkin, Peter Jackson, Gore Verbinski, and Michael Bay; Mervyn LeRoy, Ken Annakin and Robert Wise are each represented by one solo credit and one shared credit, and John Ford co-directed two films. Grosses are not limited to original theatrical runs either, with many older films often being re-released periodically so the figures represent all the business a film has done since its original release; a film's first-run gross is included in brackets after the total if known. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's . Worldwide Lifetime Gross: $1,128,462,972. Estimates depend on the price index used to adjust the grosses,[31] and the exchange rates used to convert between currencies can also affect the calculations, both of which can have an effect on the ultimate rankings of an inflation adjusted list. Even if it came up a bit short internationally, it still became the fourth billion-dollar grosser in Pixars history and their third-highestgrossing film overall. Tony Scotts fighter pilot movie Top Gun topped the box office in 1986 with a domestic gross of $176.8 million (it tallied $357.3 million worldwide), so it was no slouch by any means, and it went on to become a celebrated cult classic. In 1997, Cameronblew out the budget again and this time there was worry he may have gone too far. It still remains the highest-grossing domestic release of all time. [a] If ancillary income from merchandise is included, then Star Wars is the most lucrative property;[112] it holds the Guinness world record for the "most successful film merchandising franchise" and was valued at 19.51billion in 2012 (approximately $30billion). In addition to the five aforementioned which Lucas directed, the franchise has also had The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi (2015-2017, respectively), top a year. 2. Tom Cruise suited up again to play ace pilot Pete Maverick Mitchell in Joseph Kosinskis three-and-a-half-decades-later sequelTop Gun: Maverick and delivered what was easily the biggest movie of the summer (and probably the entire year), landing at N0. [45] The success of White Christmas and South Pacific in the 1950s foreshadowed the comeback of the musical in the 1960s with West Side Story, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Funny Girl all among the top films of the decade. Some sources claim that The Big Parade superseded The Birth of a Nation as highest-grossing film, eventually being replaced by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which in turn was quickly usurped by Gone with the Wind. Before James Cameron owned the top two spots in all-time domestic box office (for a period), it was Steven Spielberg who had pulled off that feat. TFAThe gross for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is adjusted from the 2016 index. Domestic audiences showed up for the revamped outing with Jack Sparrow, just not in the expected droves, and a mammoth international total ($804.6 million)kept Stranger Tidesin the record books. By the end of its run, the eight Harry Potterhad films grossed a combined $7.72 billion. This chart contains the top movies based on the cumulative worldwide box office. With a worldwide box-office gross of over $2.9billion, Avatar is proclaimed to be the "highest-grossing" film, but such claims usually refer to theatrical revenues only and do not take into account home video and television income, which can form a significant portion of a film's earnings. Adding Batman into their Superman storyline couldnt do it. The film is based on the Transformers toy line and was directed by Micheal Bay. It was the central piece of what is considered one of the greatest comic-book films ever made. IMDb User Guide Included on the list are charts of the top box-office earners (ranked by both the nominal and real value of their revenue), a chart of high-grossing films by calendar year, a timeline showing the transition of the highest-grossing film record, and a chart of the highest-grossing film franchises and series. An enduring staple of the franchise model is the concept of the crossover, which can be defined as "a story in which characters or concepts from two or more discrete texts or series of texts meet". The grosses from their original theatrical runs are included here along with totals from re-releases up to the point that they lost the record; therefore the total for The Birth of a Nation includes income from its reissues up to 1940; the total for Star Wars includes revenue from the late 1970s and early 1980s reissues but not from the 1997 Special Edition; the total for E.T. The main argument against this figure is that it simply did not have a wide enough release to sustain the sort of sums that would be required for it to ultimately gross this amount. Fans of J.K. Rowlings fantasy series got to see its characters (and the actors who played them) grow up in front of their eyes. [23] To compensate for the devaluation of the currency, some charts make adjustments for inflation, but not even this practice fully addresses the issue, since ticket prices and inflation do not necessarily parallel one another. Trade journals would collate the data by either obtaining it from the distributors themselves, who were keen to promote a successful film, or by surveying theaters and constructing an estimate. But combined it remains the champion overall in worldwide gross (and bonus for the studio: it had one of the series lowest budgets). Television broadcast rights will also substantially add to a film's earnings, with a film often earning as much as 2025% of its theatrical box office for a couple of television runs on top of pay-per-view revenues;[4] Titanic earned a further $55million from the NBC and HBO broadcast rights,[1] equating to about 9% of its North American gross. Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News. No, it was unexpected because it managed this herculean feat even as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to keep audiences largely at home. But it was still good enough for 23rd all-time in North America and 13th in overseas dollars. The Transformers series was beginning to show its age in North America in 2014, but around the world it was more popular than ever. But even as it dipped below $300 million for the first time at home, its $858 million international haul was still thesixth-highest totalfor any movie outside the U.S. and Canada at the time. Tolkien to give audiences the Bilbo Baggins tale. $2.048 Billion Avengers: Infinity War (2018) 85% Domestic: $678.8 million Release date: April 27, 2018 Just shy of 10. [6] Merchandising can be extremely lucrative too: The Lion King also sold $3billion of merchandise,[7] while Pixar's Carswhich earned $462million in theatrical revenues and was only a modest hit by comparison to other Pixar films[8]generated global merchandise sales of over $8billion in the five years after its 2006 release. [65] Its international release was delayed by World War I, and it was not released in many foreign territories until the 1920s; coupled with further re-releases in the United States, its $10million earnings as reported by Variety in 1932 are consistent with the earlier figure. MDMom and Dad does not generally feature in 'high-gross' lists such as those published by Variety due to its independent distribution. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, On an Apple device? Animated family films have performed consistently well, with Disney films enjoying lucrative re-releases prior to the home-video era. That total remained the highest of the series until Deathly Hallows: Part 2in 2011. [39] Titanic grossed a further $762,994 during limited re-releases in 2017 and 2020, but this sum is not represented in the adjusted total.[40]. Estimates for Gone with the Wind's adjusted gross have varied substantially: its owner, Turner Entertainment, estimated its adjusted earnings at $3.3billion in 2007, a few years earlier than the Guinness estimate;[32] other estimates fall either side of this amount, with one putting its gross just under $3billion in 2010,[33] while another provided an alternative figure of $3.8billion in 2006. However, theatrical box-office earnings are the primary metric for trade publications in assessing the success of a film, mostly because of the availability of the data compared to sales figures for home video and broadcast rights, but also because of historical practice. Nevertheless, it puts a capper on a nine-episode series from 1977-2019 that grossed (with re-releases) a collective $8.71 billion. But audiences went the other direction, giving Dead Mans Chesta 38.6% boost in domesticearnings and an 84.2% boost internationally. It's only recently that the Spider-Man franchise took Harry Potter 's third place as the highest-grossing movie franchise. All grosses on the list are expressed in U.S. dollars at their nominal value, except where stated otherwise. Just shy of 10 years since it began, the Marvel Cinematic Universe gathered nearly every one of its characters for a galaxy-wide showdown withthe series Big Bad,Thanos. In just eight days, the film had grossed a half-billion domestically. Highest-grossing films adjusted for inflation, Highest-grossing franchises and film series, (The films in each franchise can be viewed by selecting "show". Though it came up shy domestically of Despicable Me 2 ($336 million vs. $368 million) it can still boast the second-best overseas return for any animated film ($823.4 million), behind only Disneys Frozen, and stands as the companys biggest global success to date. (It is now 16th.) 3 Spider-Man $9.8B. Six of the studios eight highest-grossing films ever have involved Spider-Man (or Venom), but this was the first Sony flick to cross the $1 billionline, andthe ninth film in the MCU to do it. The James Bondfranchise got a boost with Pierce Brosnan and an even larger one with Daniel Craig. Daily | "We might have been in a situation where we had two Tom Cruise blockbusters in the same year . Part of that was likely thanks to Tom Cruise reprising his role as Pete Maverick Mitchell, but director Joesph Kosinski also utilized some strategically deployed fan service and specially developed, state-of-the-art IMAX cameras for stunning action sequences to deliver the biggest crowd-pleaser of Summer 2022. [72] In addition to its gross rental earnings through public exhibition, The Birth of a Nation played at a large number of private, club and organizational engagements which figures are unavailable for. It hit with audiences the opening weekend haul of$147 million was almost $50 million more than any previous entry as well as with critics (its the highest-rated movie in the series at 81% on the Tomatameter). Four other films during the summer of 2019 also exceeded its one-time-record theater count. [56] In keeping with this new approach, the North American rental for Gone with the Wind was revised to $21million in 1947 ($11million lower than the previous figure),[58] and as of 1953following the 1947 re-releaseVariety was reporting earnings of $26million. The movie became the fifth film in history to have a $200 million opening weekend, and just the third film ever to gross over $700 million in North America, outlasting even Avengers: Infinity War that summer. Lifetime grosses (outside U.S. & Canada): Original release (excluding 2009 IMAX reissue): This page was last edited on 30 April 2023, at 18:23. The story of two sisters searching for happily-ever-after with each other rather than the standard gentlemen suitors also won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and bested 2012s Ice Age: Continental Drift for the highest international haul for an animated film ever ($875.7 million compared to $715.9 million), a record it holds to this day despite challenges fromMinions and Incredibles2. CIThe Cinerama figures represent gross amounts. Audiences were hungry forrepresentation on screenand looking for a thrilling re-introduction to the character, and in Ryan Cooglers action-packed, beautiful-looking epic, they got both. That made sense given that the 1994 original, at the time, was one of the studios most successful films in the middle ofitsrebirth, and director Jon Favreaus CGI-fueled version traced it for a new generation. By the end of that summer only four films had grossed more domestically in their initial runs thanThe Dark Knight Rises:Avatar, Titanic, The Dark Knight,and Marvels The Avengers, which was the only film to eclipse Risesin all of 2012. Among the first five attempts Disney had made to bring its classiccartoons to life by 2010, Tim Burtons Alice In Wonderland was by far the most successful. FBox Office Mojo stopped updating its main total for Frozen in August 2014, while it was still in release. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. It includes movies released in previous years that earned money during 2023. While inflation has eroded the achievements of most films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there are franchises originating from that period that are still active. It still remains the highest-grossing domestic release of all time.
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