Streaming was supposed to have killed the movie theater experience; why go out when you can watch the latest movie from home? But despite dire predictions, movies continue to shatter box office records worldwide. To wit: On the list of the 20 highest-grossing movies in history, all of them have brought in at least $1.2 billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
These movies aren’t cheap. Modern blockbusters demand that producers spend millions of dollars to make a billion dollars. It’s a high rollers gamble, but it pays dividends. Just in the last four years, we’ve added seven new entries to this list. And it’s only going to get crazier. Nearly every movie on this list is part of a successful franchise (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Avatar, Frozen), which means that all it takes is another sequel or re-release to upend the ordering.
We used the cumulative worldwide box office as measured by Box Office Mojo. Here are the top 20 grossing movies of all time.
Avatar (2009)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Titanic (1997)
Star Wars Ep VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021
Jurassic World (2015)
The Lion King (2019)
The Avengers (2012)
Director: Joss Whedon
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth
Worldwide Box Office: $1,518,815,515
At any given moment, there is a film executive somewhere in America looking out the window of his 60th floor corner office thanking every single God he can think of for comic books. It hardly matters whether the movies are any good (and to be fair, there have been some garbage adaptations in the Marvel and DC universes alike), nearly any movie based on a comic book story appears destined for blockbuster status. And when they’re as well crafted as The Avengers was, every dollar is well-deserved.