Highest Grossing Movie Franchises

95th percentile. I'm glad I forgot Bayformers. I'm working hard to block those atrocities from my memory. Didn't miss any of the other top 12. Also, maybe you could accept Jason Bourne for "Bourne?" Or just change the criteria to "contains Bourne" rather than "starts with?"

Oh that's the only one I forgot from the top 12 as well :)

It doesn't matter how you type it -- Bourne, Jason Bourne, The Bourne Identity, the Bourne Supremacy, ad nauseum -- because this franchise isn't on the list.

It was two and a half years ago when I left the comment.

When I read "Bayformers" the first thing that jumped into my mind was Baywatch since I recently saw the teaser for the new movie on YouTube. Imagine sexy, scantily clad autobots running in slow motion down the beach...

Is all this adjusted for inflation? Some of these franchises are pretty old?

No it's not. If it were, then James Bond would be #1. Rocky, Jaws, Superman, the Exorcist, The Godfather, Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon would all make the list, pushing off Men in Black, Ice Age, The Fast and the Furious, the Matrix, Jason Bourne, Iron Man, Madagascar and the Fockers.

oh, and Home Alone would be #24... inflation adjusted... if we are not counting Avengers.

lol i guessed all those

though... after researching my own quiz about Actors with Frequently Recurring Roles, I noticed that boxofficemojo doesn't seem to track data back any farther than the 60s or so. I figured this out because James Bond, with 24 films, is listed in their numbers as the franchise with the highest number of films. However, in my own research, I discovered many series with more than that. Hopalong Cassidy for example had 66 films in the series, and was enormously popular in its day. I wonder how some of those franchises would stack up against today's if the figures were adjusted for inflation. Look up on Wikipedia films with more than 10 installments and you'll see there are a ton, especially from pre-1951.

I thought Rocky would be on here.

only 6 star wars movies

the animated movie, clone wars or something, even though nobody saw it.

I saw it and I regretted ever doing so.

star wars holiday special included too?

I only got 4 . . . guess I'm just not in the zone today.

how did I forget my favourite movie franchise of all time - pirates?

No Superman? There have been a ton of those movies!

does Superman vs Batman add to both of those franchises totals? And if they make a Justice League movie will it then add to that one as well? The comic book crossover franchises are going to get confusing. Captain America 3 was really a mini-Avengers movie, too.

well they were missing 2 team members

Hardest thing about quizzes like this... Hollywood milks these series for all they're worth. I think we're up to
7 XMen (3 more possibly coming),
6 LOTR (with #7 on the way),
6 Fast and Furious (They should've stopped around 5 ago), and
12 Star Trek (More PLEASE!!!).

Okay, if I want more of one, I suppose it's possible people want more of the others...

Am I alone in thinking the Abrams Trek movies have been mostly awful, saved only by some fortuitous casting and the fun of seeing the original Trek characters young again?
And Fast and Furious should have been stopped before they made the first one.

You're probably not alone, but personally I find the reboot movies much more entertaining than any of the bald-girl-sacrificing, Khan-screaming, Spock-searching, whale-saving, God-impersonating, Kirk-framing plots from the original series' movie adaptations. Lens flares aside, the last two movies have completely revived my interest in a franchise of which I didn't even bother to see the previous two installments.

Some of the older Trek movies I don't care for, either. But personally I thought that Wrath of Khan and First Contact were superior films to the Abrams Treks, even if they weren't quite as much fun, and for my money, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is hands down the best Trek movie ever. Cool plot, smart script, snappy and fun dialogue, exciting action sequences.

but, yeah, there were without doubt several turds amongst the original films, too.

My complete ranking would be: 1. Star Trek (reboot) 2. Into Darkness 3. Undiscovered Country 4. First Contact 5. Wrath of Khan 6. Voyage Home 7. Search for Spock 8. Generations 9. Motion Picture 10/11 Insurrection and Nemesis (aka interchangeable slightly longer TNG episodes) ~37 Billion. Final Frontier (aka the WORST MOVIE EVER)

Well, since I started this, here are my rankings:
1 - First Contact
2 - Undiscovered Country
3 - Wrath of Khan
4 - Into Darkness
5 - Insurrection
6 - Voyage Home
7 - Star Trek 2009
8 - Nemesis
9 - Search for Spock
10 - Final Frontier
11 - Motion Picture

I would say Undiscovered Country is hands down the best. First Contact maybe 2nd best. Star Trek (2009), might actually be 3rd for me. The script has some really really stupid bits (Orci and Kurtzman are hacks), and Abrams' directing didn't do much for me, but it's a fun film, well cast. I'd put Wrath of Khan 4th... it was good, but I always thought it was overrated. Generations 5th which plats forgot to rank. Voyage Home might be a distant 6th, fun, but also overrated. And the rest are garbage. Including Into Darkness.

Ah crap. Hmm, Generations would go between Voyage Home and 2009.

The trouble with old movies is that one should remember the times in which they were first shown. For those of us who grew up watching only the cheesy special effects from the original Star Trek TV shows, those first movies were wonderful and we didn't even notice the negative aspects until critics pointed them out. I didn't like the first reboot movie at all. I feel the same way about Star Wars. Having just seen Rogue One, I much prefer the original Star Wars movies - the magic and humor has been lost to too much extreme fast-paced action and special effects. (Feel free to heap abuse on my head for that opinion.) With sequels maybe it just all boils down to expectations and how well they are met.

No Ander you've got many, many allies on your Star Wars opinion. The new films are mostly terrible. Rogue One wasn't *terrible* but it didn't match the originals. Force Awakens was mostly "meh" with a few good bits and a few terrible bits thrown in. The Last Jedi was just downright awful. And everyone born before 1990 hates the prequels.

I wonder where Star Trek Beyond would go in all these rankings.

It would be interesting to see how much this list would change when adjusted for inflation. It just seems wrong that Alien, Terminator, Die Hard, Jaws, Back to the Future and Planet of the Apes aren't on the list.

I was surprised when I found a WSJ article which gave a list of 35 series adjusted for inflation, and the results were not that different, only listed in a different order. The top five in descending order were Star Wars, James Bond, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, and JK Rowling's Wizarding World (which included the HP movies along with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.) I was confused that the Harry Potter series also came in at number six and under both Rowling entries, the first HP movie was listed as the highest grossing. Not sure why HP and Wizarding World were considered as two separate franchises when the revenue was the same for both. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/04/24/35-top-grossing-movie-franchises-of-all-time/8/

Hey if you like this quiz you might like one I made: http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/66970/100-greatest-film-performances-of-all-time

Boxofficemojo list only five godzilla movies. I wonder if it would qualify if they included all of them.

I'll be very curious to see how boxofficemojo handles the conundrum of into which franchise "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice" belongs. In addition to being part of two existing franchises, it's meant to launch a third "Justice League" franchise as well.

Unlike this quiz, Box Office Mojo recognises the existence of the DC Extended Universe, as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If the quiz followed the source, Marvel would be far and away at the top.

Although the top franchises wouldn't change much, it's kind of sad that only the American box office gross is counted. Also, I've never understood why the highest-grossing single films aren't shown among the franchises even though they've made enough money.

For a very long time, American box office was the only thing that really mattered. Films that were released overseas could make a little more money but normally just a pittance compared to their domestic take. This is rapidly changing, and now it is common, especially for big dumb blockbuster movies (ironically often thought of as stereotypically American, they are actually more popular internationally) to earn 60-70% of their gross overseas.

However, many organizations that count box office still only consider US box office except in special cases. I think out of habit or tradition than anything else. I expect this trend to change in the next decade.

Avatar would still make into the list if it were included. Is that another tradition? P.S. Most highest-grossing films are still made mostly in the USA.

When Avatar 2 is released and QM updates this quiz I assume that it will then show up. With only one film it's not yet a franchise.

and yes they are made in the USA but many of them make more money overseas. The Fast & Furious movies, for example, make over 70% of their box office outside of the USA. So until the rest of the world stops buying tickets for these idiotic movies you can't really blame Americans for making them. The really good American movies (of which there are many more made than anywhere else in the world, too), often don't get wide international releases.

I can see that you are outdated. For example Captain America 2 made over 750million alone + the 400million from CA1 should definitely bring it on to the list.

Those are the international box office numbers. Domestically the Captain America franchise has now earned $827 million but half of that is from Civil War and this came out after the last update.

star wars= life

You Think Terminator might be close to being on this list, as well as maybe godzilla, and indiana jones possibly. but what do I know

I knew almost all of them...I knew Twilight was number 5.....but refused to give it as an answer...such an insult to human intelligence that this can ranked number 5 alongside some of the great movies/franchises here

Your definitions of the franchises don't really make sense. I wouldn't call the unrelated films that all contain Batman as one franchise. That's not how the term is used in the modern-day industry, especially nowadays when they're all trying to get in on transmedia and cinematic universes. The Dark Knight Trilogy is a separate franchise to the previous four Batman films, just as two movies based on the same book aren't a franchise and a modern remake of an old film doesn't create a franchise. These aren't franchises; they're just films based on the same properties. It makes the results extremely inaccurate, not least because you're not counting the Marvel Cinematic Universe and now the DC Extended Universe.

By that logic, James Bond should be split up then. You going to complain about that too?

I should have guessed James Bond. It was the number that threw me. I had no idea there were that many Bond films.

I agree on the order but are these numbers correct? I thought some of these franchises would have way higher grosses.

What? None of the National Lampoon Vacation movies? Sad...

No Ma and Pa Kettle?

Finding Nemo/Dory out-grosses Bourne.

True. $826 million domestic.

would the franchise be listed under "Nemo?" "Finding?"

Well, LotR and Hobbit are lumped under "Middle Earth", so I suppose you could just put "Lost Fish?"

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/?view=Franchise&sort=sumgross&order=DESC

I think the Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street films might win that one? If it was per film.

Really great quiz- some of these i dint really expect

Now wait just a minute. The highest grossing movie franchise of all time is the Avengers franchise. And I don't care what quizmaster says, because I am sticking to the facts.

What facts? The Force Awakens grossed almost $1 billion alone. The 2 Avengers movies combined are less than $1.1 billion. So you're saying the 8 other Star Wars movies combined made less than $200 million?

He might be counting the entire MCU as part of the Avengers franchise. It's going to be confusing either way, but I think it would be better to consider the MCU and DCEU single franchises, then separate out the other Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Hulk and Captain America films that were not part of either and consider them separately. This creates more work but personally I think it makes more sense and is closer to reality.

MCU films: Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Thor, The Dark World, Ragnarok, The Avengers, Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 1 and 2, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man Homecoming, Black Panther

non-MCU Spider-Man: Spider-Man, SM2, SM3, The Amazing Spider-Man, TASM2. Might be tricky figuring out where to place Venom.

other non-MCU films: Hulk (2003), Captain America (1990)

DCEU film: Man of Steel, Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League

non-DCEU Batman films: Batman (1966), Batman (1989), Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Mask of the Phantasm, Lego Batman (?)

non-DCEU Superman films: Superman, Superman 2, Superman 3, Superman 4, Superman Returns

Star Wars, Spiderman, Pirates, Fast/Furious, Despicable Me need updating since new movies have come out. Plus Transformers and Thor have movies coming out later this year.

Also, why does Toy Story say 4 films? Toy Story 4 isn't out yet. Is there another Toy Story movie that I'm not aware of?

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, apparently. It is still apart of the Toy Story franchise.

Never heard of that. But after looking it up, it's a direct-to-video movie so I'm surprised it would be included since it obviously doesn't affect the box office number.

I managed to forget about Harry Potter. Freaky.

If you included single movies, Avatar would be #2 in this list.

No, it wouldn't be on the list at all. The domestic gross of Avatar was $760.5M - the remainder was international, which is not counted here. The only single movie that could make this list as a standalone is actually already part of a franchise - Star Wars Episode VII ($936M domestic). So can everyone stop talking about "single movie franchises" now?

counting only the official movies would be better, 10 sw, 9 hp, 25 jb looks strange

I found a lot of these to be gross.

I see the logic in separating out franchises like Captain America, Iron Man, etc. from The Avengers. But following that same logic, shouldn't Wolverine and Deadpool be counted separately from the X-Men franchise? Yes, there is some crossover by characters, but that happens in the Marvel movies as well. These franchises are so intertwined that it's hard to define which ones belong in which series (for example, where do you count BvS: Dawn of Justice? Batman? Superman? Both? Neither?), but X-Men/Wolverine seems clearly to be the same situation as The Avengers/Iron Man to me.

The source did indeed include Deadpool and Wolverine in the X-Men franchise. They wouldn't make the list otherwise. Batman and Superman both inlcude Dawn of Justice. And there's also an entry for the Marvel Cinematic Universe alltogether which is not included in this quiz though.

I’m disappointed that Despicable Me made more money than Toy Story did

One can immediately tell that I don't really care about movies by the fact that I forgot Star Wars. And pretty much everything else.

Some of the answers are in the wrong order (either that or the numbers are wrong).

Maybe update again with infinity war? Curious where it will end up

The source puts Avengers at 1.761 bil USD inculding Infinity War.

Why keep making a new Planet of the Apes movie every year if they earn an average of less than 100 million? the last movies look really high budget...

This quiz uses (I'm guessing US-) domestic gross. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes alone made over 710 million USD worldwide.