Misc
Box Office Blockbusters: The Top Grossing Movies in the Last 30 Years
The Top Grossing Movies in the Last 30 Years
People have varying opinions on what constitutes a good movie. And while it’s nearly impossible to identify a film’s intrinsic quality—at least, in an objective way—one thing that can be measured is the revenue that a movie generates.
With this in mind, here’s a look at the top grossing movies worldwide since the early 1990s, using data from Box Office Mojo. These figures include box office revenue as of May 2021, but don’t consider other revenue sources like merchandise sales.
The Full List: Top 50 Highest Grossing Movies
Coming in at number one on the list is Avatar—since its release in 2009, this Oscar-winning hit has grossed $2.84 billion in box office sales.
Rank | Title | Lifetime Gross | Year |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Avatar | $2,847,246,203 | 2009 |
2 | Avengers: Endgame | $2,797,501,328 | 2019 |
3 | Titanic | $2,201,647,264 | 1997 |
4 | Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens | $2,068,455,677 | 2015 |
5 | Avengers: Infinity War | $2,048,359,754 | 2018 |
6 | Jurassic World | $1,670,516,444 | 2015 |
7 | The Lion King | $1,657,870,986 | 2019 |
8 | The Avengers | $1,518,815,515 | 2012 |
9 | Furious 7 | $1,515,255,622 | 2015 |
10 | Frozen II | $1,450,026,933 | 2019 |
11 | Avengers: Age of Ultron | $1,402,809,540 | 2015 |
12 | Black Panther | $1,347,597,973 | 2018 |
13 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 | $1,342,321,665 | 2011 |
14 | Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi | $1,332,698,830 | 2017 |
15 | Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom | $1,310,464,680 | 2018 |
16 | Frozen | $1,281,835,246 | 2013 |
17 | Beauty and the Beast | $1,264,434,525 | 2017 |
18 | Incredibles 2 | $1,243,089,244 | 2018 |
19 | The Fate of the Furious | $1,236,005,118 | 2017 |
20 | Iron Man 3 | $1,214,811,252 | 2013 |
21 | Minions | $1,159,444,662 | 2015 |
22 | Captain America: Civil War | $1,153,337,496 | 2016 |
23 | Aquaman | $1,148,485,886 | 2018 |
24 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | $1,142,630,912 | 2003 |
25 | Spider-Man: Far from Home | $1,131,927,996 | 2019 |
26 | Captain Marvel | $1,128,462,972 | 2019 |
27 | Transformers: Dark of the Moon | $1,123,794,079 | 2011 |
28 | Skyfall | $1,108,569,499 | 2012 |
29 | Transformers: Age of Extinction | $1,104,054,072 | 2014 |
30 | The Lion King | $1,083,720,877 | 1994 |
31 | The Dark Knight Rises | $1,081,142,612 | 2012 |
32 | Joker | $1,074,251,311 | 2019 |
33 | Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker | $1,074,148,486 | 2019 |
34 | Toy Story 4 | $1,073,394,593 | 2019 |
35 | Toy Story 3 | $1,066,970,811 | 2010 |
36 | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest | $1,066,179,747 | 2006 |
37 | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | $1,056,057,720 | 2016 |
38 | Aladdin | $1,050,693,953 | 2019 |
39 | Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides | $1,045,713,802 | 2011 |
40 | Despicable Me 3 | $1,034,800,131 | 2017 |
41 | Jurassic Park | $1,033,928,303 | 1993 |
42 | Finding Dory | $1,028,570,942 | 2016 |
43 | Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace | $1,027,082,707 | 1999 |
44 | Alice in Wonderland | $1,025,468,216 | 2010 |
45 | Zootopia | $1,023,792,558 | 2016 |
46 | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | $1,017,003,568 | 2012 |
47 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | $1,006,968,171 | 2001 |
48 | The Dark Knight | $1,005,973,645 | 2008 |
49 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 | $977,043,483 | 2010 |
50 | Despicable Me 2 | $970,766,005 | 2013 |
Avatar cost $237 million to produce, meaning it’s turned a considerable profit over the years. But Avatar’s success was fairly unsurprising, considering the stellar track record of the film’s writer and director, James Cameron.
Cameron also directed Titanic, which broke records back in 1998 when it became the first film to break $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue. In fact, Titanic was the top grossing movie for years, until Avatar stole its title in 2009.
Interestingly, in 2019, Avatar was temporarily dethroned by Avengers: Endgame, which held the number one spot for a couple of years. But thanks to a recent theatrical reissue in China (which alone grossed an estimated $21.1 million) Avatar has since reclaimed its title as the top grossing movie worldwide.
Avengers: Endgame remains a close second, with $2.80 billion in gross revenue. It’s one of 23 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and besides Endgame, eight other movies from the MCU also appear on the top grossing movies list:
- Avengers: Infinity War – #5
- The Avengers – #8
- Avengers: Age of Ultron – #11
- Black Panther – #12
- Iron Man 3 – #20
- Captain America: Civil War – #22
- Spider-man: Far From Home – #25
- Captain Marvel – #26
Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment back in 2009. And while Marvel honored its existing contracts with other distributors, Disney owns the lion’s share of Marvel film rights and has earned over $18.2 billion as a result.
The Top Distributors
Marvel movies aren’t the only Disney productions to make the list. In fact, 26 of the 50 top grossing films were originally released by Disney, making it the top distributor.
Rank | Film Studio | # of Top Grossing Titles |
---|---|---|
1 | Disney | 26 |
2 | Universal Studios | 8 |
3 | Warner Bros | 8 |
4 | 20th Century Fox | 2 |
5 | Paramount | 2 |
6 | New Line Cinema | 1 |
7 | Dreamworks | 1 |
8 | Sony | 2 |
Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures tie for second. Warner Bros. was the domestic distributor of some pop culture classics like Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, and The Hobbit, while Universal Pictures released Fast and Furious, Despicable Me, and Jurassic Park.
It’s worth mentioning that several of the distributors on the list are labels of larger studios. For instance, Warner Bros. is the parent company of New Line Cinema, Dreamworks is a branch of Universal, and 20th Century Fox was recently bought by Disney and rebranded to 20th Century Studios.
The COVID-19 Impact
The entertainment business was significantly impacted by the global pandemic, like many other industries across the globe. In 2020, global box office revenue totaled $12.4 billion—a 70% dip from 2019.
Despite recent setbacks, industry professionals are feeling confident that things will recover post-pandemic. In a recent interview with The Deadline, Chairman of STXfilms Adam Fogelson said, “People like leaving their homes and having fun, emotional, communal experiences together…I don’t think that will change.”
Maps
The Incredible Historical Map That Changed Cartography
Check out the Fra Mauro Mappa Mundi (c. 1450s), a historical map that formed a bridge between medieval and renaissance worldviews.

The Incredible Historical Map That Changed Cartography
This map is the latest in our Vintage Viz series, which presents historical visualizations along with the context needed to understand them.
In a one-paragraph story called On Exactitude in Science (Del Rigor en la Ciencia), Jorge Luis Borges imagined an empire where cartography had reached such an exact science that only a map on the same scale of the empire would suffice.
The Fra Mauro Mappa Mundi (c. 1450s), named for the lay Camaldolite monk and cartographer whose Venetian workshop created it, is not nearly as large, at a paltry 77 inches in diameter (196 cm). But its impact and significance as a bridge between Middle Age and Renaissance thought certainly rivaled Borges’ imagined map.
One of ‘the Wonders of Venice’
Venice was the undisputed commercial power in the Mediterranean, whose trade routes connected east and west, stretching to Flanders, London, Algeria, and beyond.
This network was protected by fleets of warships built at the famous Arsenale di Venezia, the largest production facility in the West, whose workforce of thousands of arsenalotti built ships on an assembly line, centuries before Henry Ford.
The lion of St Mark guards the land gate to the Arsenale di Venezia, except instead of the usual open bible in its hands offering peace, this book is closed, reflecting its martial purpose. Source: Wikipedia
The Mappa Mundi (literally “map of the world”) was considered one of the wonders of Venice with a reputation that reached the Holy Land. It is a circular planisphere drawn on four sheets of parchment, mounted onto three poplar panels and reinforced by vertical battens.
The map is painted in rich reds, golds, and blues; this last pigment was obtained from rare lapis lazuli, imported from mines in Afghanistan. At its corners are four spheres showing the celestial and sublunar worlds, the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), and an illumination of the Garden of Eden by Leonardo Bellini (active 1443-1490).
Japan (on the left edge, called the Isola de Cimpagu) appears here for the first time in a Western map. And contradicting Ptolemaic tradition, it also shows that it was possible to circumnavigate Africa, presaging the first European journey around the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.
NASA called the historical map “stunning” in its accuracy.
A Historical Map Between Two Worlds
Medieval maps, like the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300), were usually oriented with east at the top, because that’s where the Garden of Eden was thought to be. Fra Mauro, however, chose to orient his to the south, perhaps following Muslim geographers such as Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Idrisi.
Significantly, the Garden of Eden is placed outside of geographic space and Jerusalem is no longer at the center, though it is still marked by a windrose. The nearly 3,000 place names and descriptions are written in the Venetian vernacular, rather than Latin.
At the same time, as much as Fra Mauro’s map is a departure from the past, it also retains traces of a medieval Christian worldview. For example, included on the map are the Kingdom of the Magi, the Kingdom of Prester John, and the Tomb of Adam.
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae (c. 600–625). Source: Wikipedia
The circular planisphere also follows the medieval T-O schema, first described by Isidore of Seville, with Asia occupying the top half of the circle, and Europe and Africa each occupying the bottom two quarters (Fra Mauro turns the ‘T’ on its side, to reflect a southern orientation). Around the circle, are many islands, beyond which is the “dark sea” where only shipwreck and misfortune await.
Fra Mauro’s Legacy
Fra Mauro died some time before 20 October 1459, and unfortunately his contributions fell into obscurity soon thereafter; until 1748, it was believed that the Mappa Mundi was a copy of a lost map by Marco Polo.
In 1811, the original was moved from Fra Mauro’s monastery of San Michele to the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, following the suppression of religious orders in the Napoleonic era, where it can be viewed today.
Two digital editions have also been produced by the Museo Galileo and the Engineering Historical Memory project, where readers can get a glimpse into a fascinating piece of cartographic history.
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