Gone with the Wind held the record of highest-grossing film for twenty-five years and, adjusted for inflation, has earned more than any other film.
Films generate income from several revenue streams, including theatrical exhibition, home video, television broadcast rights, and merchandising. 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. 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. All charts are ranked by international theatrical box-office performance where possible, excluding income derived from home video, broadcasting rights, and merchandise.
Traditionally, war films, musicals, and historical dramas have been the most popular genres, but franchise films have been among the best performers of the 21st century. There is strong interest in the superhero genre, with eleven films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe featuring among the nominal top-earners. The most successful superhero film, Avengers: Endgame, is also the second-highest-grossing film on the nominal earnings chart, and there are four films in total based on the Avengers comic books charting in the top twenty. Other Marvel Comics adaptations have also had success with the Spider-Man and X-Men properties, while films based on Batman and Superman from DC Comics have generally performed well. Star Wars is also represented in the nominal earnings chart with five films, while the Jurassic Park franchise features prominently. 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. Animated family films have performed consistently well, with Disney films enjoying lucrative re-releases prior to the home-video era. Disney also enjoyed later success with films such as Frozen and its sequel, Zootopia, and The Lion King (along with its computer-animated remake), as well as its Pixar division, of which Inside Out 2 (the highest-grossing animated film), Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 3 and 4 have been the best performers. Beyond Disney and Pixar animation, the Despicable Me and Shrek series have met with the most success.
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. Besides the Star Wars and Superman franchises, James Bond and Godzilla films are still being released periodically; all four are among the highest-grossing franchises. Some of the older films that held the record of highest-grossing film still have respectable grosses by today's standards, but no longer compete numerically against today's top-earners in an era of much higher individual ticket prices. When those prices are adjusted for inflation, however, then Gone with the Wind—which was the highest-grossing film outright for twenty-five years—is still the highest-grossing film of all time. All grosses on the list are expressed in U.S. dollars at their nominal value, except where stated otherwise.
Highest-grossing films
Three of the four highest-grossing films, including Avatar at the top, were written and directed by James Cameron.
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. Once revenue from home entertainment is factored in, it is not immediately clear which film is the most successful. Titanic earned $1.2 billion from video and DVD sales and rentals,[1] in addition to the $2.2 billion it grossed in theaters. While complete sales data are not available for Avatar, it earned $345 million from the sale of sixteen million DVD and Blu-ray units in North America,[2] and ultimately sold a total of thirty million DVD and Blu-ray units worldwide.[3] After home video income is accounted for, both films have earned over $3 billion each. Television broadcast rights also substantially add to a film's earnings and, as of 2010, a film often earned the equivalent of as much as 20–25% of its theatrical box office for two television runs, on top of pay-per-view revenues;[4]Titanic earned a further $55 million from the NBC and HBO broadcast rights,[1] equating to about 9% of its North American gross.
When a film is highly exploitable as a commercial property, its ancillary revenues can dwarf its income from direct film sales.[5]The Lion King (1994) earned over $2 billion in box-office and home video sales,[1] but this pales in comparison to the $8 billion earned at box offices around the world by the stage adaptation.[6]Merchandising can be extremely lucrative too: The Lion King also sold $3 billion of merchandise,[7] while Pixar's Cars—which earned $462 million in theatrical revenues and was only a modest hit by comparison to other Pixar films[8]—generated global merchandise sales of over $8 billion in the five years after its 2006 release.[9][10] Pixar had another huge hit with Toy Story 3, which generated almost $10 billion in merchandise retail sales in addition to the $1 billion it earned at the box office.[11]
On this chart, films are ranked by the revenues from theatrical exhibition at their nominal value, along with the highest positions they attained. Six films in total have grossed in excess of $2 billion worldwide, with Avatar ranked in the top position. All of the films have had a theatrical run (including re-releases) in the 21st century, and films that have not played during this period do not appear on the chart because of ticket-price inflation, population size and ticket purchasing trends not being considered.
† Background shading indicates films playing in the week commencing 29 November 2024 in theaters around the world.
TThe totals given for Titanic at Box Office Mojo and The Numbers are both incorrect. Prior to the 2023 re-release, the totals at both trackers were inflated above the true figure.
As of 2019, Box Office Mojo correctly recorded that Titanic had grossed $1.843 billion on its original release, $344 million from its 3D reissue in 2012, and a further $692,000 from a limited release in 2017 for a lifetime total of $2.187 billion.[13] Following a limited re-release in 2020, Box Office Mojo incorrectly added $7 million to the original release total.[14] By the end of 2021, Box Office Mojo had corrected the original release total, but added the $7 million figure to both the 2012 and 2017 reissue totals, incorrectly increasing the lifetime total by $14 million to $2.202 billion.[15] At the beginning of 2023, Box Office Mojo corrected the total for the 2017 reissue, bringing the lifetime gross down to $2.195 billion, but retained the error in the 2012 reissue.[16]
The Numbers does not log individual releases, but had the lifetime total recorded as $2.186 billion in September 2014 (roughly equating to $1.843 billion for the original release and $343.6 million for the 3D reissue).[17] A couple of weeks later, The Numbers increased the lifetime gross to $2.208 billion, without explanation.[18]
FBox Office Mojo stopped updating its main total for Frozen in August 2014, while it was still in release. The total listed here incorporates subsequent earnings in Japan, Nigeria, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany up to the end of 2015 but omits earnings in Turkey, Iceland, Brazil, and Australia (2016), which amount to a few hundred thousand dollars. The total is rounded to $1 million to compensate for the numerical inaccuracy. It was re-released in the United Kingdom in December 2017 with the featurette Olaf's Frozen Adventure, earning an additional $2.3 million.
F8In the case of The Fate of the Furious the gross is from an archived version of Box Office Mojo, after irregularities were discovered in the current figure. Ongoing weekly drops in the totals for several countries—Argentina being the worst affected—led to a drop in the overall worldwide total.[19] In view of what appears to be an aberration in the source, a previous figure is provided.
RKThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King saw its original gross corrected in early 2020. The result of this correction is that Spider-Man: Far From Home, Captain Marvel and Transformers: Dark of the Moon all peaked one place lower than shown in the accompanying source.
TS3Box Office Mojo revised the grosses for Pixar films in August 2016, resulting in the gross for Toy Story 3 being corrected from $1.063 billion to $1.067 billion.[20][21] This means that it peaked at number 4 at the end of its run, ahead of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, rather than at number 5 as indicated by the source.
Inflation rates around the world vary, complicating inflation adjustment.
Because of the long-term effects of inflation, notably the significant increase of movie theater ticket prices, the list unadjusted for inflation gives far more weight to later films.[22] The unadjusted list, while commonly found in the press, is therefore largely meaningless for comparing films widely separated in time, as many films from earlier eras will never appear on a modern unadjusted list, despite achieving higher commercial success when adjusted for price increases.[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. For example, in 1970, tickets cost $1.55 or about $6.68 in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars; by 1980, prices had risen to about $2.69, a drop to $5.50 in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars.[24] Ticket prices have also risen at different rates of inflation around the world, further complicating the process of adjusting worldwide grosses.[22]
Another complication is release in multiple formats for which different ticket prices are charged. 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.[25] Social and economic factors such as population change[26] and the growth of international markets[27][28][29] also have an effect on the number of people purchasing theater tickets, along with audience demographics where some films sell a much higher proportion of discounted children's tickets, or perform better in big cities where tickets cost more.[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.[30] Converting to a more representative system that counts ticket sales rather than gross is also fraught with problems because the only data available for older films are the sale totals.[26] As the motion picture industry is highly oriented towards marketing currently released films, unadjusted figures are always used in marketing campaigns so that new blockbuster films can much more easily achieve a high sales ranking, and thus be promoted as a "top film of all time",[24][31] so there is little incentive to switch to a more robust analysis from a marketing or even newsworthy point of view.[30]
Despite the inherent difficulties in accounting for inflation, several attempts have been made. 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. Gone with the Wind—first released in 1939—is generally considered to be the most successful film, with Guinness World Records in 2014 estimating its adjusted global gross at $3.4 billion. Estimates for Gone with the Wind's adjusted gross have varied substantially: its owner, Turner Entertainment, estimated its adjusted earnings at $3.3 billion 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 $3 billion in 2010,[33] while another provided an alternative figure of $3.8 billion in 2006.[34] Which film is Gone with the Wind's nearest rival depends on the set of figures used: Guinness had Avatar in second place with $3 billion, while other estimates saw Titanic in the runner-up spot with first-run worldwide earnings of almost $2.9 billion at 2010 prices.[33]
Highest-grossing films as of 2022[update] adjusted for inflation[35][Inf]
InfInflation adjustment is carried out using the Consumer price index for advanced economies published by the International Monetary Fund.[36] The index is uniformly applied to the grosses in the chart published by Guinness World Records in 2014, beginning with the 2014 index. The figures in the above chart take into account inflation that occurred in 2014, and in every available year since then, through 2022.
GWThe adjusted gross for Gone with the Wind includes the original release and reissue grosses up to 1998, adjusted from the Guinness base year, and the 2019 gross[37] adjusted from the 2020 index. There have been several limited re-releases in the 2020s, but the grosses from these reissues are not represented in the adjusted gross.
A1The adjusted gross for Avatar includes revenue from the original release and all four reissues. The original release and 2010 Special Edition grosses are adjusted from the Guinness base year, whilst the 2020 and 2021 grosses are adjusted from the 2021 index and the 2022 gross from 2022.[38]
TGuinness' adjusted total for Titanic only increased by $102,000,000 between the 2012 (published in 2011) and 2015 editions, a rise of 4.2% shared by the other adjusted totals in the chart, and omitted the gross from a 3D re-release in 2012.[35][39] This chart incorporates the gross of $343,550,770 from the reissue and adjusts it from the 2013 index.[40]Titanic grossed a further $762,994 during limited re-releases in 2017 and 2020, and these have been incorporated into the gross from the 25th anniversary reissue and adjusted from the 2023 index.[41]
ETThe adjusted gross for E.T. includes revenue from the original release and all re-releases. The original release along with the 1985 and 2002 reissues are adjusted from the Guinness base year, whilst the 2020 and 2022 grosses[42] are adjusted from the 2022 index.
AEThe gross for Avengers: Endgame is adjusted from the 2020 index.
TFAThe gross for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is adjusted from the 2016 index.
Box-office figures are reported in either gross revenue or distributor rentals, the latter being especially true of older films. Commonly mistaken for home video revenue, distributor rentals are the distributor's share of the film's theatrical revenue (i.e. the box office gross less the exhibitor's cut).[43][44] Historically, the rental price averaged at 30–40% when the distributors owned the theater chains, equating to just over a third of the gross being paid to the distributor of the film.[45] In the modern marketplace, rental fees can vary greatly—depending on a number of factors—although the films from the major studios average out at 43%.[43]
Audience tastes were fairly eclectic during the 20th century, but several trends did emerge. During the silent era, films with war themes were popular with audiences, with The Birth of a Nation (American Civil War), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Big Parade and Wings (all World War I) becoming the most successful films in their respective years of release, with the trend coming to an end with All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930. With the advent of sound in 1927, the musical—the genre best placed to showcase the new technology—took over as the most popular type of film with audiences, with 1928 and 1929 both being topped by musical films. The genre continued to perform strongly in the 1930s, but the outbreak of World War II saw war-themed films dominate again during this period, starting with Gone with the Wind (American Civil War) in 1939, and finishing with The Best Years of Our Lives (World War II) in 1946. Samson and Delilah (1949) saw the beginning of a trend of increasingly expensive historical dramas set during Ancient Rome/biblical times throughout the 1950s as cinema competed with television for audiences,[46] with Quo Vadis, The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and Spartacus all becoming the highest-grossing film of the year during initial release, before the genre started to wane after several high-profile failures.[47] 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. The 1970s saw a shift in audience tastes to high concept films, with six such films made by either George Lucas or Steven Spielberg topping the chart during the 1980s. The 21st century has seen an increasing dependence on franchises and adaptations, with the box-office dominance of films based on pre-existing intellectual property at record levels.[48]
Films directed by Steven Spielberg have been the highest-grossing film of the year on six occasions, and on three occasions have been the highest-grossing film of all time.
Steven Spielberg is the most represented director on the chart, with six films to his credit, occupying the top spot in 1975, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1989 and 1993. Cecil B. DeMille (1932, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1956) is in second place with five films and William Wyler (1942, 1946, 1959 and 1968) and James Cameron (1991, 1997, 2009 and 2022) are tied for third place with four films. D. W. Griffith (1915, 1916 and 1920), George Roy Hill (1966, 1969 and 1973) and the Russo brothers (2016, 2018 and 2019) all feature heavily with three films apiece. George Lucas directed two chart-toppers in 1977 and 1999, but also served in a strong creative capacity as a producer and writer in 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1989 as well. 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. Disney films are usually co-directed and some directors have served on several winning teams: Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, David Hand, Ben Sharpsteen, Wolfgang Reitherman and Bill Roberts have all co-directed at least two films on the list. Only seven directors have topped the chart in consecutive years: McCarey (1944 and 1945), Nichols (1966 and 1967), Spielberg (1981 and 1982), Jackson (2002 and 2003), Verbinski (2006 and 2007) and the Russo brothers (2018 and 2019).
Because of release schedules—especially in the case of films released towards the end of the year—and different release patterns across the world, many films can do business in two or more calendar years; therefore the grosses documented here are not confined to just the year of release. 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. Because of incomplete data it cannot be known for sure how much money some films have made and when they made it, but generally the chart chronicles the films from each year that went on to earn the most. In the cases where estimates conflict both films are recorded, and in cases where a film has moved into first place because of being re-released the previous record-holder is also retained.
† Background shading indicates films playing in the week commencing 29 November 2024 in theaters around the world.
High-grossing films by year of release[49][50][51]
(...) Since grosses are not limited to original theatrical runs, a film's first-run gross is included in brackets after the total if known.
*Canada and U.S. gross only.
RDistributor rental.
TBATo be ascertained.
INNo contemporary sources provide figures for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, although The Numbers provides a figure of $8,000,000 for the North American box-office gross.[54] 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.[55]
FHSome sources such as The Numbers state that Aloma of the South Seas is the highest grossing film of the year, earning $3 million.[56] However, no contemporary sources provide figures for Aloma of the South Seas, so it is unclear what the $3 million figure relates to. If it were the rental gross then that would have made it not only the highest-grossing film of the year, but one of the highest-grossing films of the silent era, and if that is the case it would be unusual for both International Motion Picture Almanac and Variety to omit it from their lists.
SSIt is not clear if the figure for Sunny Side Up is for North America or worldwide. Other sources put its earnings at $2 million,[57] which may suggest the higher figure is the worldwide rental, given the confusion over international figures during this period.[58]
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.[59]
S7Snow White's $418 million global cume omits earnings outside of North America from 1987 onwards.
GWIt is not absolutely clear how much Gone with the Wind earned from its initial release. Contemporary accounts often list it as earning $32 million in North American rentals and retrospective charts have often duplicated this claim; however, it is likely this was the worldwide rental figure. 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. 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. Following the outbreak of World War II, many of the foreign markets were unavailable to Hollywood so it became standard practice to just report on North American box-office performance.[58] In keeping with this new approach, the North American rental for Gone with the Wind was revised to $21 million in 1947 ($11 million lower than the previous figure),[60] and as of 1953—following the 1947 re-release—Variety was reporting earnings of $26 million.[61] Through 1956, MGM reported cumulative North American earnings of $30,015,000 and foreign earnings of $18,964,000, from three releases.[62] Worldwide rentals of $32 million from the initial release is consistent with the revised figures and later reported worldwide figures: they indicate that the film earned $21 million in North America and $11 million overseas from the initial release, and added a further $9 million in North America and $8 million overseas from subsequent re-releases up to 1956.
MDMom and Dad does not generally feature in 'high-gross' lists such as those published by Variety due to its independent distribution. Essentially belonging to the exploitation genre, it was marketed as an educational sex hygiene film in an effort to circumvent censorship laws. Falling foul of the Motion Picture Production Code, Mom and Dad was prevented from obtaining mainstream distribution and restricted to independent and drive-in theaters. It was the biggest hit of its kind, and remained in continual distribution until the 1970s when hardcore pornography eventually took over. At the end of 1947 it had earned $2 million, and by 1949, $8 million; by 1956 it had earned $22 million in rentals, representing a gross of $80 million, and would have easily placed in the top ten films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Estimates of its total earnings are as high as $100 million.
UNChopra-Gant stipulates that the figure given for Unconquered is for North American box-office, but as was common at the time, the chart confuses worldwide and North American grosses. Other sources state that the takings for Forever Amber ($8 million) and Life with Father ($6.5 million)[63] were in fact worldwide rental grosses, so it is possible this is also true of Unconquered.
CIThe Cinerama figures represent gross amounts. Since the Cinerama corporation owned the theaters there were no rental fees for the films, meaning the studio received 100% of the box-office gross, unlike the case with most other films where the distributor typically receives less than half the gross. 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 $50 million worldwide gross was reconfigured as a $12.5 million 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.[64] All five Cinerama features collectively generated $120 million in worldwide box office receipts.[65]
GSVariety put the worldwide rental for The Greatest Show on Earth at around $18.35 million (with $12.8 million coming from the United States[55]) a year after its release; however, Birchard puts its earnings at just over $15 million up to 1962. It is likely that Birchard's figure is just the North American gross rental, and includes revenue from the 1954 and 1960 reissues.
SWThe "first run" Star Wars grosses do not include revenue from the 1997 special-edition releases; however, the figure does include revenue from the re-releases prior to the special editions.
HP1The Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone reissue totals recorded by Box Office Mojo for Brazil (2020), Italy (2021), Netherlands (2021) and South Korea (2021) have been deducted from the lifetime gross due to Box Office Mojo double-counting the original release grosses in those countries.
The Birth of a Nation pioneered many of the techniques used in filmmaking today, becoming the most successful film ever made at the time of its release.
At least eleven films have held the record of 'highest-grossing film' since The Birth of a Nation assumed the top spot in 1915. Both The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind spent twenty-five consecutive years apiece as the highest-grosser, with films directed by Steven Spielberg and James Cameron holding the record on three occasions each. 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. When it took over the top spot in 2019, Avengers: Endgame became the first sequel to hold the record of highest-grossing film, and in doing so interrupted thirty-six years of Spielberg/Cameron dominance before Avatar reclaimed the top spot two years later in 2021 upon a re-release.
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.[66] Exact figures are not known for The Birth of a Nation, but contemporary records put its worldwide earnings at $5.2 million as of 1919.[67] 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 $10 million earnings as reported by Variety in 1932 are consistent with the earlier figure.[68] At this time, Variety still had The Birth of a Nation ahead of The Big Parade ($6,400,000) on distributor rentals and—if its estimate is correct—Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ($8,500,000)[69] would not have earned enough on its first theatrical run to take the record;[70] although it would have been the highest-grossing 'talkie',[71] displacing The Singing Fool ($5,900,000).[72] Although received wisdom holds that it is unlikely The Birth of a Nation was ever overtaken by a silent-era film,[73] the record would fall to 1925's Ben-Hur ($9,386,000) if The Birth of a Nation earned significantly less than its estimated gross.[74] 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.[75] It was hugely popular with the Ku Klux Klan who used it to drive recruitment,[76] and at one point Variety estimated its total earnings to stand at around $50 million.[77] Despite later retracting the claim, the sum has been widely reported even though it has never been substantiated.[67] While it is generally accepted that Gone with the Wind took over the record of highest-grossing film on its initial release—which is true in terms of public exhibition—it is likely it did not overtake The Birth of a Nation in total revenue until a much later date, with it still being reported as the highest earner up until the 1960s.[75]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 $58–60 million[78][79] compared to Gone with the Wind's $59 million;[80] 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 $67 million. Depending on how accurate the estimates are, the 1959 remake of Ben-Hur may also have captured the record from Gone with the Wind: as of the end of 1961 it had earned $47 million worldwide,[81] and by 1963 it was trailing Gone with the Wind by just $2 million with international takings of $65 million,[82] ultimately earning $66 million from its initial release.[83]
The 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat reportedly earned as much as $600 million, a figure that may have been inflated by gangsters in money-laundering schemes.
Another film purported to have been the highest-grosser is the 1972 pornographic filmDeep Throat. In 1984, Linda Lovelace testified to a United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on juvenile justice that the film had earned $600 million;[84] this figure has been the subject of much speculation, since if it is accurate then the film would have made more money than Star Wars, and finished the 1970s as the highest-grossing film. 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.[85] Exact figures are not known, but testimony in a federal trial in 1976—about four years into the film's release—showed the film had grossed over $25 million.[86]Roger Ebert has reasoned it possibly did earn as much as $600 million on paper, since mobsters owned most of the adult movie theaters during this period and would launder income from drugs and prostitution through them, so probably inflated the box-office receipts for the film.[87]
The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., and Avatar all increased their record grosses with re-releases. 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. incorporates its gross from the 1985 reissue but not from 2002. The total for Avatar's first appearance on the chart includes revenue from the 2010 Special Edition, which represents all of its earnings up to the point it relinquished the record, whereas its second appearance also incorporates revenue from a 2020 re-release in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the 2021 re-release in China which helped it to reclaim the record. Gone with the Wind is likewise represented twice on the chart: the 1940 entry includes earnings from its staggered 1939–1942 release (roadshow/general release/second-run)[88] along with all of its revenue up to the 1961 reissue prior to losing the record to The Sound of Music in 1966; its 1971 entry—after it took back the record—includes income from the 1967 and 1971 reissues but omitting later releases. The Godfather was re-released in 1973 after its success at the 45th Academy Awards, and Jaws was released again in 1976, and their grosses here most likely include earnings from those releases. The Sound of Music, The Godfather, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Titanic have all increased their earnings with further releases, but they are not included in the totals here because they had already conceded the record prior to being re-released.
‡Includes revenue from re-releases. If a film increased its gross through re-releases while holding the record, the year in which it recorded its highest gross is also noted in italics.
Prior to 2000, only seven film series had grossed over $1 billion at the box office: James Bond,[100]Star Wars,[101]Indiana Jones,[102]Rocky,[103][104][105]Batman,[106]Jurassic Park,[107] and Star Trek.[108] Since the turn of the century, that number has increased to over a hundred.[109] This is partly due to inflation and market growth, but it is also due to Hollywood's adoption of the franchise model: films that have built-in brand recognition such as being based on a well-known literary source or an established character. The methodology is based on the concept that films associated with things audiences are already familiar with can be more effectively marketed to them, and as such are known as "pre-sold" films within the industry.[110]
A franchise is typically defined to be at least two works derived from a common intellectual property. Traditionally, the work has a tautological relationship with the property, but this is not a prerequisite. 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".[111] A consequence of a crossover is that an intellectual property may be utilized by more than one franchise. 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. A shared universe is a particular type of crossover where a number of characters from a wide range of fictional works wind up sharing a fictional world.[112] The most successful shared universe in the medium of film is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a crossover between multiple superhero properties owned by Marvel Comics. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is also the highest-grossing franchise, amassing over $31 billion at the box office.
The Spider-Man films are the highest-grossing series based on a single property, earning over $11 billion at the box office (although the EonJames Bond films have earned over $19 billion in total when adjusted to current prices).[a] The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had the most films gross over $1 billion, with eleven. The four Avengers films, the two Frozen films, and the two Avatar films are the only franchises where each installment has grossed over $1 billion, although the Jurassic Park, Black Panther and Inside Out series have averaged over $1 billion per film.
†Background shading indicates that at least one film in the series is playing in the week commencing 29 November 2024 in theaters around the world.
^Prior to the release of Spectre in 2015, the James Bond series had grossed approximately $17.7 billion at 2015 prices;[113] after factoring in earnings of over $1.6 billion from Spectre and No Time to Die, the series has earned at least $19.3 billion adjusted for inflation.
^Vogel, Harold L. (2010). Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. Cambridge University Press. p. 224. ISBN978-1-107-00309-5. Most pictures would likely receive 20% to 25% of theatrical box office gross for two prime-time network runs.
^"Avatar (2009)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021. Retrieved September 10, 2022. 2020 Re-release: $1,281,204; 2021 Re-release: $57,995,770; 2022 Re-release: $76,012,917
^Glenday, Craig, ed. (2011). Гиннесс. Мировые рекорды [Guinness World Records] (in Russian). Translated by Andrianov, P.I.; Palova, I.V. (2012 ed.). Moscow: Astrel. p. 211. ISBN978-5-271-36423-5.
^ abCones, John W. (1997). The feature film distribution deal: a critical analysis of the single most important film industry agreement. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 41. ISBN978-0-8093-2082-0. Distributor rentals: It is also important to know and recognize the difference between the distributor's gross receipts and the gross rentals. The term "rentals" refers to the aggregate amount of the film distributor's share of monies paid at theatre box offices computed on the basis of negotiated agreements between the distributor and the exhibitor. Note that gross receipts refers to amounts actually received and from all markets and media, whereas gross rentals refers to amounts earned from theatrical exhibition only, regardless of whether received by the distributor. Thus, gross receipts is the much broader term and includes distributor rentals. The issue of film rentals (i.e., what percentage of a film's box office gross comes back to the distributor) is of key importance...More current numbers suggest that distributor rentals for the major studio/distributor released films average in the neighborhood of 43% of box office gross. Again, however, such an average is based on widely divergent distributor rental ratios on individual films.
^Marich, Robert (2009) [1st. pub. Focal Press:2005]. Marketing to moviegoers: a handbook of strategies used by major studios and independents (2 ed.). Southern Illinois University Press. p. 252. ISBN978-0-8093-2884-0. Rentals are the distributors' share of the box office gross and typically set by a complex, two-part contract.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 179. "Later epics proved far more disastrous for the backers. Samuel Bronston's The Fall of the Roman Empire, filmed in Spain, cost $17,816,876 and grossed only $1.9 million in America. George Stevens's long-gestating life of Christ, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), which had been in planning since 1954 and in production since 1962, earned domestic rentals of $6,962,715 on a $21,481,745 negative cost, the largest amount yet spent on a production made entirely within the United States. The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966) was financed by the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis from private investors and Swiss banks. He then sold distribution rights outside Italy jointly to Fox and Seven Arts for $15 million (70 percent of which came from Fox), thereby recouping the bulk of his $18 million investment. Although The Bible returned a respectable world rental of $25.3 million, Fox was still left with a net loss of just over $1.5 million. It was the last biblical epic to be released by any major Hollywood studio for nearly twenty years."
^Schickel, Richard (1996). D. W. Griffith: An American Life. Limelight Series. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 326. ISBN978-0-87910-080-3. ...there exists a very precise production accountant's statement, drawn up some time after the picture was finished, previews had been held and release prints struck. This document shows that the negative cost of the picture was precisely $385,906.77...
^Milwaukee Magazine. Vol. 32. 2007. The year's top–grossing movie, Aloma made $3 million in the first three months and brought Gray back to Milwaukee for its opening at the Wisconsin Theatre.
^Parkinson, David (2007). The Rough Guide to Film Musicals. Dorling Kindersley. p. 28. ISBN978-1-84353-650-5. But they had previously succeeded in showing how musicals could centre on ordinary people with Sunny Side Up (1929), which had grossed $2 million at the box office and demonstrated a new maturity and ingenuity in the staging of story and dance.
^ abHall & Neale 2010, pp. 6–7. "For similar reasons of accountability, Variety has typically used figures for domestic (U.S. and Canadian) rather than worldwide revenue. This became its standard policy in 1940, when the advent of war in Europe persuaded the American film industry (temporarily, as it turned out) that it should be wholly reliant on the home market for profitability. Where specific rentals data are reported in Variety before this (which tended to be only sporadically) they were often for worldwide rather domestic performance. This was also the case with other trade sources, such as Quigley's annual Motion Picture Almanac, which published its own all-time hits lists from the early 1930s onward. The subsequent confusion of domestic and worldwide figures, and of rental and box-office figures, has plagued many published accounts of Hollywood history (sometimes including those in Variety itself), and we have attempted to be diligant in clarifying the differences between them."
^McBride, Joseph (2011). Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. University Press of Mississippi. p. 309. ISBN978-1-60473-838-4. According to the studio's books It Happened One Night brought in $1 million in film rentals during its initial release, but as Joe Walker pointed out, the figure would have been much larger if the film had not been sold to theaters on a block-booking basis in a package with more than two dozen lesser Columbia films, and the total rentals of the package spread among them all, as was customary in that era, since it minimized the risk and allowed the major studios to dominate the marketplace.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 129. "Domestic Rentals: $30,015,000 (61%); Foreign Rentals: $18,964,000 (39%)...Gone with the Wind includes initial release plus four rereleases (1941,1942,1947 and 1954) since foreign rental revenues were available only cumulative through 1956."
^McDermott, Christine (2010), Life with Father, p. 307, No matter what the billing, the movie became a worldwide hit with $6.5 million in worldwide rentals, from Pappa och vi in Sweden to Vita col padre in Italy, although it booked a net loss of $350,000. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Mulligan, Hugh A. (September 23, 1956). "Cinerama Pushing Ahead As Biggest Money-Maker". The Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. p. 7B.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 145. "The commercial success of the five Cinerama travelogues, which earned an aggregate worldwide box-office gross of $120 million by 1962 (including $82 million in the United States and Canada), nevertheless demonstrated to the mainstream industry the market value of special screen formats."
^ abWasko, Janet (1986). "D.W. Griffiths and the banks: a case study in film financing". In Kerr, Paul (ed.). The Hollywood Film Industry: A Reader. Routledge. p. 34. ISBN978-0-7100-9730-9. Various accounts have cited $15 to $18 million profits during the first few years of release, while in a letter to a potential investor in the proposed sound version, Aitken noted that a $15 to $18 million box-office gross was a 'conservative estimate'. For years Variety has listed The Birth of a Nation's total rental at $50 million. (This reflects the total amount paid to the distributor, not box-office gross.) This 'trade legend' has finally been acknowledged by Variety as a 'whopper myth', and the amount has been revised to $5 million. That figure seems far more feasible, as reports of earnings in the Griffith collection list gross receipts for 1915–1919 at slightly more than $5.2 million (including foreign distribution) and total earnings after deducting general office expenses, but not royalties, at about $2 million.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 237. "By the end of 1938, it had grossed more than $8 million in worldwide rentals and was ranked at the time as the second-highest-grossing film after the 1925 epic Ben-Hur".
^Finler 2003, p. 47. "Walt Disney took a big risk when he decided to invest $1.5 million in his first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It became the biggest hit of the sound era and the largest-grossing movie since The Birth of a Nation – until the release of independent producer David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind just two years later."
^Barrios, Richard (1995). A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film. Oxford University Press. p. 49. ISBN978-0-19-508811-3. Since it's rarely seen today, The Singing Fool is frequently confused with The Jazz Singer; although besides Jolson and a pervasively maudlin air the two have little in common. In the earlier film Jolson was inordinately attached to his mother and sang "Mammy"; here the fixation was on his young son, and "Sonny Boy" became an enormous hit. So did the film, which amassed a stunning world-wide gross of $5.9 million...Some sources give it as the highest gross of any film in its initial release prior to Gone with the Wind. This is probably overstating it—MGM's records show that Ben-Hur and The Big Parade grossed more, and no one knows just how much The Birth of a Nation brought in. Still, by the standards of the time it's an amazing amount.
^Everson, William K. (1998) [First published 1978]. American silent film. Da Capo Press. p. 374. ISBN978-0-306-80876-0. Putting The Birth of a Nation in fifth place is open to question, since it is generally conceded to be the top-grossing film of all time. However, it has always been difficult to obtain reliable box-office figures for this film, and it may have been even more difficult in the mid-1930s. After listing it until the mid-1970s as the top-grosser, though finding it impossible to quote exact figures, Variety, the trade journal, suddenly repudiated the claim but without giving specific details or reasons. On the basis of the number of paid admissions, and continuous exhibition, its number one position seems justified.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 163. "MGM's silent Ben-Hur, which opened at the end of 1925, had out-grossed all the other pictures released by the company in 1926 combined. With worldwide rentals of $9,386,000 on first release it was, with the sole possible exception of The Birth of a Nation, the highest-earning film of the entire silent era."
^ abdu Brow, Rick (September 22, 1965). "Documentary On The Klan Made Quite An Impact On Du Brow". The Columbus Dispatch. p. 12.
^Klopsch, Louis; Sandison, George Henry; Talmage, Thomas De Witt (1965). Christian Herald. Vol. 88. p. 68. Yet "The Ten Commandments" has earned 58 million dollars in film rentals and is expected to bring in 10 to 15 million each year it is reissued.
^Hall & Neale 2010, pp. 160–161. "General release began at normal prices in 1959 and continued until the end of the following year, when the film was temporarily withdrawn (the first of several reissues came in 1966). The worldwide rental by this time was around $60 million. In the domestic market it dislodged Gone with the Wind from the number one position on Variety's list of All-Time Rentals Champs. GWTW had hitherto maintained its lead through several reissues (and was soon to regain it through another in 1961)."
^Oviatt, Ray (April 16, 1961). "The Memory Isn't Gone With The Wind". Toledo Blade. p. 67–68.
^Bartel, Pauline (1989). The Complete Gone with the Wind Trivia Book: The Movie and More. Taylor Trade Publishing. p. 127. ISBN978-0-87833-619-7. At the end of the 1941 general release, MGM decided to withdraw GWTW again. The prints were battered, but the studio believed one final fling for GWTW was possible. The film returned to movie theaters for the third time in the spring of 1942 and stayed in release until late 1943 ... When MGM finally pulled the film from exhibition, all worn-out prints were destroyed, and GWTW was at last declared out of circulation. MGM, which by then had sole ownership of the film, announced that GWTW had grossed over $32 million.
^Dick, Bernard F. (1997). City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures. University Press of Kentucky. p. 168. ISBN978-0-8131-2016-4. Jaws (1975) saved the day, grossing $104 million domestically and $132 million worldwide by January 1976.
^Kilday, Gregg (July 5, 1977). "Director of 'Jaws II' Abandons His 'Ship'". The Victoria Advocate. p. 6B.
^New York (AP) (May 26, 1978). "Scariness of Jaws 2 unknown quantity". The StarPhoenix. p. 21.
^Cook, David A. (2002). Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970–1979. Vol. 9 of History of the American Cinema, Charles Harpole. University of California Press. p. 50. ISBN978-0-520-23265-5. The industry was stunned when Star Wars earned nearly $3 million in its first week and by the end of August had grossed $100 million; it played continuously throughout 1977–1978, and was officially re-released in 1978 and 1979, by the end of which it had earned $262 million in rentals worldwide to become the top-grossing film of all time – a position it would maintain until surpassed by Universal's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in January 1983.
Pre-2020 releases: "Titanic (1997)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on October 27, 2019. Worldwide: $2,187,615,730; Original release: $1,843,373,318; 2012 3D Release: $343,550,770; 2017 Re-release: $691,642
"Frozen (2013) – International Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on August 9, 2014. Worldwide – $1,274,219,009 (total as of August 8, 2014; including Japanese gross up to August 3, Spanish gross up to July 27, UK gross up to June 8, German gross up to March 30, and omitting Nigerian gross)
nb. the exact euro to dollar conversion rate is unknown for earnings since April 2014, but the euro never fell below parity with the dollar during 2014 and 2015 (as can be verified by comparing the exchange rate on the individual date entries at the provided reference) so an approximate conversion rate of €1: $1 is used here to give a lower-bound.
Pre-2022 releases: "Jurassic Park (1993)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved March 7, 2022. Worldwide: $1,033,928,303; Original Release: $912,667,947; Production Budget: $63 million
As of 2010: Block & Wilson 2010, pp. 756–757. "Production Cost: $70.0 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s) ... Jurassic Park was a smash at the box office, bringing in $920 million in worldwide box office and spawning two sequels."
^Monaco, James (2009). How to Read a Film:Movies, Media, and Beyond. Oxford University Press. p. 262. ISBN978-0-19-975579-0. The Birth of a Nation, costing an unprecedented and, many believed, thoroughly foolhardy $110,000, eventually returned $20 million and more. The actual figure is hard to calculate because the film was distributed on a "states' rights" basis in which licenses to show the film were sold outright. The actual cash generated by The Birth of a Nation may have been as much as $50 million to $100 million, an almost inconceivable amount for such an early film.
^ abWasko, Janet (1986). "D.W. Griffiths and the banks: a case study in film financing". In Kerr, Paul (ed.). The Hollywood Film Industry: A Reader. Routledge. p. 34. ISBN978-0-7100-9730-9. Various accounts have cited $15 to $18 million profits during the first few years of release, while in a letter to a potential investor in the proposed sound version, Aitken noted that a $15 to $18 million box-office gross was a 'conservative estimate'. For years Variety has listed The Birth of a Nation's total rental at $50 million. (This reflects the total amount paid to the distributor, not box-office gross.) This 'trade legend' has finally been acknowledged by Variety as a 'whopper myth', and the amount has been revised to $5 million. That figure seems far more feasible, as reports of earnings in the Griffith collection list gross receipts for 1915–1919 at slightly more than $5.2 million (including foreign distribution) and total earnings after deducting general office expenses, but not royalties, at about $2 million.
Cleopatra: "Domestic Rentals: $0.5; Production Cost: $0.3 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
^Birchard, Robert S. (2010), Intolerance, p. 45, Intolerance was the most expensive American film made up until that point, costing a total of $489,653, and its performance at the box ... but it did recoup its cost and end with respectable overall numbers. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Shipman, David (1970). The great movie stars: the golden years. Crown Publishing Group. p. 98. It was a low budgeter—$120,000—but it grossed world-wide over $3 million and made stars of Chaney and his fellow-players, Betty Compson and Thomas Meighan.
Way Down East: p. 52Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "D.W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920) was projected to return rentals of $4,000,000 on an $800,000 negative. This figure was based on the amounts earned from its roadshow run, coupled with its playoff in the rest of the country's theaters. Griffith had originally placed the potential film rental at $3,000,000 but, because of the success of the various roadshows that were running the $4,000,000 total was expected. The film showed a profit of $615,736 after just 23 weeks of release on a gross of $2,179,613."
What Price Glory?: p. 112Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "What Price Glory hit the jackpot with massive world rentals of $2,429,000, the highest figure in the history of the company. Since it was also the most expensive production of the year at $817,000 the profit was still a healthy $796,000..."
Cavalcade: p. 170Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "The actual cost of Cavalcade was $1,116,000 and it was most definitely not guaranteed a success. In fact, if its foreign grosses followed the usual 40 percent of domestic returns, the film would have lost money. In a turnaround, the foreign gross was almost double the $1,000,000 domestic take to reach total world rentals of $3,000,000 and Fox's largest profit of the year at $664,000."
State Fair: p. 170 . "State Fair did turn out to be a substantial hit with the help of Janet Gaynor boosting Will Rogers back to the level of money-making star. Its prestige engagements helped raked in a total $1,208,000 in domestic rentals. Surprisingly, in foreign countries unfamiliar with state fairs, it still earned a respectable $429,000. With its total rentals, the film ended up showing a $398,000 profit."
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 53. "The Four Forsemen of the Apocalypse was to become Metro's most expensive production and one of the decade's biggest box-office hits. Its production costs have been estimated at "something between $600,000 and $800,000." Variety estimated its worldwide gross at $4 million in 1925 and at $5 million in 1944; in 1991, it estimated its cumulative domestic rentals at $3,800,000."
^Brownlow, Kevin (1968). The parade's gone by . University of California Press. p. 255. ISBN978-0-520-03068-8. The negative cost was about $986,000, which did not include Fairbanks' own salary. Once the exploitation and release prints were taken into account, Robin Hood cost about $1,400,000—exceeding both Intolerance ($700,000) and the celebrated "million dollar movie" Foolish Wives. But it earned $2,500,000.
^Vance, Jeffrey (2008). Douglas Fairbanks. University of California Press. p. 146. ISBN978-0-520-25667-5. The film had a production cost of $930,042.78—more than the cost of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance and nearly as much as Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives (1922).
ch. 70. The Ten Commandments (1956). "Cost: $13,272,381.87; Gross receipts: $90,066,230.00 (to June 23, 1979)"
^May, Richard P. (Fall 2005), "Restoring The Big Parade", The Moving Image, 5 (2): 140–146, doi:10.1353/mov.2005.0033, ISSN1532-3978, S2CID192076406, ...earning somewhere between $18 and $22 million, depending on the figures consulted
^Robertson, Patrick (1991). Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats (4 ed.). Abbeville Publishing Group. p. 30. ISBN978-1-55859-236-0. The top grossing silent film was King Vidor's The Big Parade (US 25), with worldwide rentals of $22 million.
^Hall & Neale 2010, pp. 58–59. "Even then, at a time when the budget for a feature averaged at around $300,000, no more than $382,000 was spent on production...According to the Eddie Mannix Ledger at MGM, it grossed $4,990,000 domestically and $1,141,000 abroad."
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 163. "MGM's silent Ben-Hur, which opened at the end of 1925, had out-grossed all the other pictures released by the company in 1926 combined. With worldwide rentals of $9,386,000 on first release it was, with the sole possible exception of The Birth of a Nation, the highest-earning film of the entire silent era. (At a negative cost of $3,967,000, it was also the most expensive.)"
^Finler 2003, p. 188. "At a cost of $2 million Wings was the studio's most expensive movie of the decade, and though it did well it was not good enough to earn a profit."
Block, Hayley Taylor (2010), The Jazz Singer, p. 113, The film brought in $2.6 million in worldwide rentals and made a net profit of $1,196,750. Jolson's follow-up Warner Bros. film, The Singing Fool (1928), brought in over two times as much, with $5.9 in worldwide rentals and a profit of $3,649,000, making them two of the most profitable films in the 1920s. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Birchard, Robert S. (2010), The Broadway Melody, p. 121, It earned $4.4 million in worldwide rentals and was the first movie to spawn sequels (there were several until 1940). In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Bradley, Edwin M. (2004) [1st. pub. 1996]. The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. McFarland & Company. ISBN978-0-7864-2029-2.
The Singing Fool: p. 12Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Ego aside, Jolson was at the top of his powers in The Singing Fool. The $150,000 Warner Bros. paid him to make it, and the $388,000 it took to produce the film, were drops in the hat next to the film's world gross of $5.9 million. Its $3.8-million gross in this country set a box-office record that would not be surpassed until Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)."
The Broadway Melody: p. 24Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "The Broadway Melody with a negative cost of $379,000, grossed $2.8 million in the United States, $4.8 million worldwide, and made a recorded profit of $1.6 million for MGM."
Gold Diggers of Broadway: p. 58Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "It grossed an impressive $2.5 million domestically and nearly $4 million worldwide."
^ abcSolomon, Aubrey (2002) [First published 1988]. Twentieth Century-Fox: a corporate and financial history. Filmmakers series. Vol. 20. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN978-0-8108-4244-1.
Sunny Side Up: p. 10Archived February 10, 2024, at the Wayback Machine. "Sunny Side Up, a musical starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, showed domestic rentals of $3.5 million, a record for the company."
Forever Amber: p. 66Archived November 7, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "On the surface, with world rentals of $8 million, Forever Amber was considered a hit at distribution level."
The French Connection
p. 167Archived November 7, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "The Planet of the Apes motion pictures were all moneymakers and Zanuck's record would have immediately improved had he stayed through the release of The French Connection, which took in rentals of approximately $75 million worldwide."
^Cormack, Mike (1993). Ideology and Cinematography in Hollywood, 1930–1939. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 28. ISBN978-0-312-10067-4. Although costing $1250000—a huge sum for any studio in 1929—the film was a financial success. Karl Thiede gives the domestic box-office at $1500000, and the same figure for the foreign gross.
Cavalcade: p. 182Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Produced by Winfield Sheehan at a cost of $1.25 million, Cavalcade won Academy Awards for best picture, director, art direction and grossed close to $4 million during its first release, much of which came from Great Britain and the Empire."
Whoopee: p. 212Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Produced by Sam Goldwyn at a cost of $1 million, the picture was an adaptation of a smash musical comedy built around Eddie Cantor...A personality-centered musical, Whoopee! made little attempt to integrate the comedy routines, songs, and story. Nonetheless, Cantor's feature-film debut grossed over $2.6 million worldwide and started a popular series that included Palmy Days (1931), The Kid from Spain (1932), and Roman Scandals (1933)."
Balio, Tino (1976). United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 110. Hughes did not have the "Midas touch" the trade press so often attributed to him. Variety, for example, reported that Hell's Angels cost $3.2 million to make, and by July, 1931, eight months after its release, the production cost had nearly been paid off. Keats claimed the picture cost $4 million to make and that it earned twice that much within twenty years. The production cost estimate is probably correct. Hughes worked on the picture for over two years, shooting it first as a silent and then as a talkie. Lewis Milestone said that in between Hughes experimented with shooting it in color as well. But Variety's earnings report must be the fabrication of a delirious publicity agent, and Keats' the working of a myth maker. During the seven years it was in United Artists distribution, Hell's Angels grossed $1.6 million in the domestic market, of which Hughes' share was $1.2 million. Whatever the foreign gross was, it seems unlikely that it was great enough to earn a profit for the picture.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 163. "It drew $1.4 million in worldwide rentals in its first run versus $1.2 million for Dracula, which had opened in February 1931."
^Vance, Jeffrey (2003). Chaplin: genius of the cinema. Abrams Books. p. 208. Chaplin's negative cost for City Lights was $1,607,351. The film eventually earned him a worldwide profit of $5 million ($2 million domestically and $3 million in foreign distribution), an enormous sum of money for the time.
^Ramsaye, Terry, ed. (1937). "The All-Time Best Sellers – Motion Pictures". International Motion Picture Almanac 1937–38: 942–943. Kid from Spain: $2,621,000 (data supplied by Eddie Cantor)
^ abcdSedgwick, John (2000). Popular Filmgoing In 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures. University of Exeter Press. pp. 146–148. ISBN978-0-85989-660-3. Sources: Eddie Mannix Ledger, made available to the author by Mark Glancy...
Grand Hotel: Production Cost $000s: 700; Distribution Cost $000s: 947; U.S. box-office $000s: 1,235; Foreign box-office $000s: 1,359; Total box-office $000s: 2,594; Profit $000s: 947.
The Merry Widow: Production Cost $000s: 1,605; Distribution Cost $000s: 1,116; U.S. box-office $000s: 861; Foreign box-office $000s: 1,747; Total box-office $000s: 2,608; Profit $000s: -113.
Viva Villa: Production Cost $000s: 1,022; Distribution Cost $000s: 766; U.S. box-office $000s: 941; Foreign box-office $000s: 934; Total box-office $000s: 1,875; Profit $000s: 87.
Mutiny on the Bounty: Production Cost $000s: 1,905; Distribution Cost $000s: 1,646; U.S. box-office $000s: 2,250; Foreign box-office $000s: 2,210; Total box-office $000s: 4,460; Profit $000s: 909.
San Francisco: Production Cost $000s: 1,300; Distribution Cost $000s: 1,736; U.S. box-office $000s: 2,868; Foreign box-office $000s: 2,405; Total box-office $000s: 5,273; Profit $000s: 2,237.
^"I'm No Angel (1933) – Notes". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2012. According to a modern source, it had a gross earning of $2,250,000 on the North American continent, with over a million more earned internationally.
^Finler 2003, p. 188. "The studio released its most profitable pictures of the decade in 1933, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, written by and starring Mae West. Produced at a rock-bottom cost of $200,000 each, they undoubtedly helped Paramount through the worst patch in its history..."
^Block, Alex Ben (2010), She Done Him Wrong, p. 173, The worldwide rentals of over $3 million keep the lights on at Paramount, which did not shy away from selling the movie's sex appeal. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Phillips, Kendall R. (2008). Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America. ABC-CLIO. p. 26. ISBN978-1-56720-724-8. The reaction to West's first major film, however, was not exclusively negative. Made for a mere $200,000, the film would rake in a healthy $2 million in the United States and an additional million in overseas markets.
The Merry Widow: p. 361 Cost: $1,605,000. Earnings: domestic $861,000; foreign $1,747,000; total $2,608,000. Loss: $113,000.
San Francisco: p. 364 Cost: $1,300,000. Earnings: domestic $2,868,000; foreign $2,405,000; total $5,273,000. Profit: $2,237,000. [Reissues in 1938–39 and 1948–49 brought profits of $124,000 and $647,000 respectively.]
^"Wall St. Researchers' Cheery Tone". Variety. November 7, 1962. p. 7.
^Dick, Bernard F. (2008). Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty. University Press of Mississippi. p. 79. ISBN978-1-60473-087-6. Although Columbia's president, Harry Cohn, had strong reservations about It Happened One Night, he also knew that it would not bankrupt the studio; the rights were only $5,000, and the budget was set at $325,000, including the performers' salaries.
Monaco, Paul (2010). A History of American Movies: A Film-By-Film Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema. Scarecrow Press. p. 54. ISBN978-0-8108-7434-3. Considered a highly risky gamble when the movie was in production in the mid-1930s, by the fiftieth anniversary of its 1937 premiere Snow White's earnings exceeded $330 million.
p. 207Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "When the budget rose from $250,000 to $1,488,423 he even mortgaged his own home and automobile. Disney had bet more than his company on the success of Snow White."
p. 237Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "By the end of 1938, it had grossed more than $8 million in worldwide rentals and was ranked at the time as the second-highest-grossing film after the 1925 epic Ben-Hur".
p. 255Archived April 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "On its initial release Pinocchio brought in only $1.6 million in domestic rentals (compared with Snow White's $4.2 million) and $1.9 million in foreign rentals (compared with Snow White's $4.3 million)."
You Can't Take It with You:"You Can't Take It With You Premieres". Focus Features. Archived from the original on September 13, 2012. You Can't Take It With You received excellent reviews, won Best Picture and Best Director at the 1938 Academy Awards, and earned over $5 million worldwide.
Boys Town: Block, Alex Ben (2010), Boys Town, p. 215, The film quickly became a smash nationwide, making a profit of over $2 million on worldwide rentals of $4 million. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
The Adventures of Robin Hood: Glancy, H. Mark (1995). "Warner Bros Film Grosses, 1921–51: the William Schaefer ledger". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 1 (15): 55–60. doi:10.1080/01439689500260031. ISSN0143-9685. $3.981 million.
Alexander's Ragtime Band: Block, Hayley Taylor (2010), Alexander's Ragtime Band, p. 213, Once the confusion cleared, however, the film blossomed into a commercial success, with a profit of $978,000 on worldwide rentals of $3.6 million. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Barrier, Michael (2003). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 266. ISBN978-0-19-983922-3. The film's negative cost was $2.6 million, more than $1 million higher than Snow White's.
^Block & Wilson 2010, pp. 258–259. "Production Cost: $2.1 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s) ... Boom Town was the biggest moneymaker of 1940 and one of the top films of the decade."
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 267. "With worldwide rentals of $7.8 million in its initial release, the movie made a net profit of over $3 million."
^Finler 2003, p. 301. "The studio did particularly well with its war-related pictures, such as Sergeant York (1941), which cost $1.6 million but was the studio's biggest hit of the decade aside from This is the Army (1943), the Irving Berlin musical for which the profits were donated to the Army Emergency Relief fund."
Bambi: "Worldwide Box Office: $266.8; Production Cost: $1.7 (Millions of $s)"
101 Dalmatians: "Worldwide Box Office: $215.0; Production Cost: $3.6 (Millions of $s)"
The Jungle Book: "Worldwide Box Office: $170.8"; Production Cost: $3.9 (Millions of $s)"
Aladdin: "Worldwide Box Office: $505.1"; Production Cost: $28.0 (Millions of $s)"
^Glancy, Mark (1999). When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood 'British' Film 1939–1945. Manchester University Press. pp. 94–95. ISBN978-0-7190-4853-1. Mrs Miniver was a phenomenon. It was the most popular film of the year (from any studio) in both North America and Britain, and its foreign earnings were three times higher than those of any other MGM film released in the 1941–42 season. The production cost ($1,344,000) was one of the highest of the season, indicating the studio never thought of the film as a potential loss-maker. When the film earned a worldwide gross of $8,878,000, MGM had the highest profit ($4,831,000) in its history. Random Harvest nearly matched the success of Mrs Miniver with worldwide earnings of $8,147,000 yielding the second-highest profit in MGM's history ($4,384,000). Random Harvest was also the most popular film of the year in Britain, where it proved to be even more popular than Britain's most acclaimed war film, In Which We Serve.
Mrs. Miniver: Burns, Douglas (2010), Mrs. Miniver, p. 279, Mrs. Miniver's galvanizing effect on Americans spawned a record-breaking ten-week run at Radio City Music Hall and garnered a $5.4 million take in domestic rentals (making Mrs. Miniver 1942's top grosser), with a $4.8 million profit on worldwide rentals of $8.9 million.
Yankee Doodle Dandy: p. 275Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "It became the second biggest box-office hit of 1942 (after Mrs. Miniver) and was praised by critics, making a profit of $3.4 million on worldwide rentals of $6.5 million."
^McAdams, Frank (2010), For Whom the Bell Tolls, p. 287, Despite the early furor over the novel being "pro-red and immoral," the film opened to strong and favorable reviews and brought in $11 million in worldwide rentals in its initial release. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^ ab"A Guy Named Joe (1944) – Notes". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2012. According to M-G-M studio records at the AMPAS Library, the film had a negative cost of $2,627,000 and took in $5,363,000 at the box office. When the picture was re-issued for the 1955–56 season, it took in an additional $150,000.
^Schaefer, Eric (1999). "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959. Duke University Press. pp. 197–199. ISBN978-0-8223-2374-7. Leading the pack of postwar sex hygiene films was Mom and Dad (1944), which would become not only the most successful sex hygiene film in history but the biggest pre-1960 exploitation film of any kind. At the end of 1947, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mom and Dad had grossed $2 million. By 1949 Time had estimated that Mom and Dad had taken in $8 million from twenty million moviegoers. And publicity issuing from Mom and Dad's production company indicated that by the end of 1956 it had grossed over $80 million worldwide. Net rentals of around $22 million by 1956 would easily place it in the top ten films of the late 1940s and early 1950s had it appeared on conventional lists. Some estimates have placed its total gross over the years at up to $100 million, and it was still playing drive-in dates into 1975...The film was made for around $65,000 with a crew of Hollywood veterans including director William "One Shot" Beaudine, cinematographer Marcel LePicard, and a cast that sported old stalwarts Hardie Albright, Francis Ford, and John Hamilton.
p. 296Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Production Cost: $1.6 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)"
Wasson, Sam (2010), The Bells of St. Mary's, p. 297, This was that rare sequel that did even better at the box office than the original, bringing in a $3.7 million profit on $11.2 million in worldwide rentals.
^"Song of the South". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. LLC. Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
^Gabler, Neal (2007). Walt Disney: the biography. Aurum Press. pp. 438. Still, the film wound up grossing $3.3 million...
p. 132Archived April 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine."Best Years was considerably cheaper, costing only $2.1 million, and therefore vastly more profitable."
p. 286Archived April 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine (note 6.70). "Worldwide rentals for The Best Years of Our Lives amounted to $14,750,000."
^Burns, Douglas (2010), The Best years of Our Lives, p. 301, The film made a $5 million profit on worldwide rentals of $14.8 million. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^ abHall & Neale 2010, p. 285 (note 6.56). "The cost of Duel in the Sun has been reported as both $5,255,000 (Haver, David O'Selznick's Hollywood, 361) and $6,480,000 (Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O'Selznick, 472); the latter figure may include distribution expenses. Forever Amber cost $6,375,000 (Solomon, Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, 243)."
^Chopra-Gant, Mike (2006). Hollywood Genres and Post-war America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Film Noir. I.B. Tauris. p. 18. ISBN978-1-85043-815-1. Forever Amber: $8 million; Unconquered: $7.5 million; Life with Father: $6.25 million
^Street, Sarah (2002). Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the United States. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 110. ISBN978-0-8264-1395-6. Although both films had higher than average budgets (The Red Shoes cost £505,581 and Hamlet cost £572,530, while the average cost of the other thirty films for which Rank supplied information was £233,000), they resulted in high takings at home and abroad.
^Officer, Lawrence H. (2011). "Dollar-Pound Exchange Rate From 1791". MeasuringWorth. Archived from the original on November 18, 2012. Retrieved November 18, 2012. 1947–1948: $4.03 (per British pound)
Samson and Delilah: "...the film became the highest grosser in the studio's history to date, with domestic rentals of $7,976,730 by 1955 and a further $6,232,520 overseas...For all their spectacle, Samson and David were quite economically produced, costing $3,097,563 and $2,170,000 respectively."
Quo Vadis: "Production costs totaled a record $7,623,000...Worldwide rentals totaled $21,037,000, almost half of which came from the foreign market."
^"Cinderella (1950)". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. Archived from the original on June 5, 2019. Retrieved January 2, 2017.
^Barrier, Michael (2003). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford University Press. p. 401. ISBN978-0-19-516729-0. It cost around $2.2 million, little more than each of the two package features, Melody Time and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (as Tluo Fabulous Characters had ultimately been named), that just preceded it, but its gross rentals—an amount shared by Disney and RKO—were $7.8 million, almost twice as much as the two package features combined.
Quo Vadis: p. 15Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "MGM's most expensive film of the period, Quo Vadis (1951) also did extremely well. The cost was $7,623,000, earnings were an estimated $21.2 million (with foreign earnings almost 50 percent of this total), and profit was estimated at $5,562,000."
Rear Window: pp. 203Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine–204Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Rear Window (1954) was an excellent commercial success, with a cost of $1 million and North American rentals of $5.3 million."
The Robe: "Domestic Rentals: $16.7; Foreign Rentals: $9.4; Production Cost: $4.1 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
Quo Vadis: "Domestic Rentals: $11.1; Foreign Rentals: $15.6; Production Cost: $7.5 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
^Mulligan, Hugh A. (September 23, 1956). "Cinerama Pushing Ahead As Biggest Money-Maker". The Register-Guard. Eugene, Oregon. p. 7B.
^Zone, Ray (2012). 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema. University Press of Kentucky. p. 71. ISBN978-0-8131-3611-0. Produced at a cost of $1 million, This is Cinerama ran 122 weeks, earning $4.7 million in its initial New York run alone and eventually grossed over $32 million. It was obvious to Hollywood that the public was ready for a new form of motion picture entertainment. The first five Cinerama feature-length travelogues, though they only played in twenty-two theaters, pulled in a combined gross of $82 million.
^Burns, Douglas (2010), The Greatest Show on Earth, pp. 354–355, By May 1953, Variety was reporting that the Best Picture winner had amassed $18.35 million in worldwide rentals. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 147–148. "To take full advantage of CinemaScope's panoramic possibilities, shooting was delayed for the sets to be redesigned and rebuilt, adding $500,000 to the eventual $4.1 million budget...It ultimately returned domestic rentals of $17.5 million and $25 million worldwide, placing it second only to Gone with the Wind in Variety's annually updated chart."
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 367. "It brought in $16.7 million in domestic rentals, $9.4 million in foreign rentals, and made a net profit of $8.1 million."
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 420. "Domestic Box Office: $19.6 million; Production Cost: $3.8 million."
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 149. "VistaVision was first used for the musical White Christmas (1954), which Variety named the top grosser of its year with anticipated domestic rentals of $12 million."
^Finler 2003, p. 320. "It was up and running in time to handle Disney's most elaborate expensive feature, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, based on the book by Jules Verne, starring James Mason and Kirk Douglas and directed by Richard Fleischer at a cost of $4.5 million."
^ abcD'Alessandro, Anthony (October 27, 2003). "Disney Animated Features at the Worldwide Box Office". Variety. Archived from the original on November 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2022 – via The Free Library. The Jungle Book $378 million; One Hundred and One Dalmatians $303 million; Lady and the Tramp $187 million
p. 382Archived April 3, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "Production Cost: $2.4 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)"
Burns, Douglas (2010), Mister Roberts, p. 383, Mister Roberts sailed onto movie screens buoyed by enthusiastic reviews and receptive audiences. For pr, Fonda, Cagney, and lemmon reenacted several scenes on ed sullivan's popular Toast of the Town television variety show. It returned a net profit of $4.5 million on worldwide rentals of $9.9 million, putting it in the top 5 domestic films of 1955.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 327. "Production cost: $13.3 million; Domestic Film Rental: $31.3; Foreign Film Rental: $23.9; Worldwide Box office (estimated): $122.7 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
The Ten Commandments: "No film did more to entrench roadshow policy than The Ten Commandments. While the success of This Is Cinerama, The Robe, and even Eighty Days could be attributed, at least in part, to their respective photographic and projection formats, that of DeMille's film (which cost a record $13,266,491) could not...General release began at normal prices in 1959 and continued until the end of the following year, when the film was temporarily withdrawn (the first of several reissues came in 1966). The worldwide rental by this time was around $60 million. In the domestic market it dislodged Gone with the Wind from the number one position on Variety's list of All-Time Rentals Champs. GWTW had hitherto maintained its lead through several reissues (and was soon to regain it through another in 1961)."
The Bridge on the River Kwai: Columbia's Anglo-American war film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) opened on a roadshow basis in selected U.S. cities (including New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles) and in London. Costing only $2,840,000 to produce, it grossed $30.6 million worldwide on first release."
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 153. "South Pacific also became for a time the most successful film ever released in the United Kingdom, where it earned a box-office gross three times its negative cost of $5,610,000. Anticipated global rentals after three years were $30 million."
^Ross, Steven J. (2011). Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics. Oxford University Press. pp. 278–279. ISBN978-0-19-991143-1. Costing $15 million to produce, the film earned $47 million by the end of 1961 and $90 million worldwide by January 1989.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 324. "Worldwide box office: $146.9 million; Worldwide rentals: $66.1 million; Production cost: $15.9 million. (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)"
^Reid, John Howard (2006). America's Best, Britain's Finest: A Survey of Mixed Movies. Vol. 14 of Hollywood classics. Lulu. p. 243–245. ISBN978-1-4116-7877-4. Negative cost: around $4 million; Worldwide film rentals gross (including 1968 American reissue) to 1970: $30 million.
^Webster, Patrick (2010). Love and Death in Kubrick: A Critical Study of the Films from Lolita Through Eyes Wide Shut. McFarland & Company. pp. 298 (note 2.23). ISBN978-0-7864-5916-2. Spartacus cost $12 million and grossed some $60 million at the box office, figures Kubrick rarely again matched.
Spartacus: "In the case of Spartacus, overseas earnings to 1969 amounted to $12,462,044, while U.S. and Canadian rentals (even including a million-dollar TV sale) were only $10,643,181. But the film failed to show a profit on production costs of $10,284,014 because of the distribution charges and expenses amounting to an additional $15,308,083."
The Bible: "The Bible—In the Beginning... (1966) was financed by the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis from private investors and Swiss banks. He then sold distribution rights outside Italy jointly to Fox and Seven Arts for $15 million (70 percent of which came from Fox), thereby recouping the bulk of his $18 million investment. Although The Bible returned a respectable world rental of $25.3 million, Fox was still left with a net loss of just over $1.5 million. It was the last biblical epic to be released by any major Hollywood studio for nearly twenty years."
^Block, Hayley Taylor (2010), West Side Story, p. 449, With its three rereleases, it took in over $105 million in worldwide box office ($720 million in 2005 dollars). In: Block & Wilson 2010.
The Sound of Music: "Domestic Rentals: $68.4; Foreign Rentals: $46.2; Production Cost: $8.0 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
The Dirty Dozen: "Domestic Rentals: $20.1; Foreign Rentals: $11.2; Production Cost: $5.4 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
2001: A Space Odyssey: "Domestic Rentals: $16.4; Foreign Rentals: $5.5; Production Cost: $10.3 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
Cleopatra: "Domestic Rentals: $22.1; Foreign Rentals: $18.2; Production Cost: $44.0 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
West Side Story: "Domestic Rentals: $16.2; Foreign Rentals: $15.6; Production Cost: $7.0 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
The Longest Day: "Domestic Rentals: $13.9; Foreign Rentals: $19.3; Production Cost: $8.6 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "Domestic Rentals: $29.2; Foreign Rentals: $7.9; Production Cost: $6.6 (Initial Release – Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
1962 release: "Lawrence of Arabia". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. LLC. Archived from the original on March 16, 2012. Retrieved August 15, 2011. Worldwide Box Office: $69,995,385; International Box Office: $32,500,000
U.S. total (including reissues): "Lawrence of Arabia". Boxoffice. Archived from the original on August 10, 2014. Retrieved May 29, 2016. $44,824,852
Lawrence of Arabia: Columbia released the $13.8 million Lawrence of Arabia (1962), filmed in Super Panavision 70, exclusively on a hard-ticket basis, but opened Barabbas (1962), The Cardinal (1963), and the $12 million Joseph Conrad adaptation Lord Jim (1965) as 70 mm roadshows in selected territories only."
The Longest Day: "Darryl's most ambitious independent production was The Longest Day (1962), a three-hour reconstruction of D-Day filmed in black-and-white CinemaScope at a cost of $8 million. It grossed over $30 million worldwide as a roadshow followed by general release, thereby helping the studio regain stability during its period of reorganization."
Cleopatra: "With top tickets set at an all-time high of $5.50,Cleopatra had amassed as much as $20 million in such guarantees from exhibitors even before its premiere. Fox claimed the film had cost in total $44 million, of which $31,115,000 represented the direct negative cost and the rest distribution, print and advertising expenses. (These figures excluded the more than $5 million spent on the production's abortive British shoot in 1960–61, prior to its relocation to Italy.) By 1966 worldwide rentals had reached $38,042,000 including $23.5 million from the United States."
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 164. "West cost $14,483,000; although it earned $35 million worldwide in just under three years, with ultimate domestic rentals totaling $20,932,883, high distribution costs severely limited its profitability."
From Russia With Love: "The American release of From Russia With Love again followed on some six months after it had been shown in Britain. North American rentals of $9.9 million were an improvement on its predecessor, helped by a slightly wider release, though they were still only half the $19.5 million of foreign rentals... (Online copyArchived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine at Google Books)"
Diamonds Are Forever: "Diamonds Are Forever marked a return to the box-office heights of the Bond films of the mid-1960s. Its worldwide rentals were $45.7 million..."[page needed]
Moonraker: "These figures were surpassed by Moonraker, which earned total worldwide rentals of $87.7 million, of which $33 million came from North America. (Online copyArchived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine at Google Books)"
From Russia With Love: "The picture grossed twice as much as Dr. No, both domestic and foreign—$12.5 million worldwide (Online copyArchived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine at Google Books)"
Goldfinger: "Produced on a budget of around $3 million, Goldfinger grossed a phenomenal $46 million worldwide the first time around. (Online copyArchived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine at Google Books)"
My Fair Lady: "My Fair Lady (1964) cost Warners $17 million to make, including a record $5.5 million just for the film rights to the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage show and a million-dollar fee for star Audrey Hepburn. By 1967 it was reported to have grossed $55 million from roadshowing worldwide."
Mary Poppins: "Mary Poppins (1964), which cost $5.2 million, was neither a stage adaptation nor a roadshow. But by the end of its first release, it had grossed nearly $50 million worldwide."
^Burns, Douglas (2010), Mary Poppins, p. 469, In its initial run, Poppins garnered an astounding $44 million in worldwide rentals and became the company's first Best Picture Oscar contender. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Silverman, Stephen M (1988). The Fox that got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. Secaucus, N.J.: L. Stuart. p. 325. ISBN978-0-8184-0485-6.
^"Hawaii". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. LLC. Archived from the original on March 16, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 188. "The negative cost of Warners' adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)—filmed in widescreen and black-and-white, largely set in domestic interiors and with a cast of only four principal actors—amounted to $7,613,000, in part because stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton received up-front fees of $1 million and $750,000 respectively, against 10 percent of the gross apiece. (Their participation was presumably added to the budget)."
^"Animals Portray Parts in Disney's "Robin Hood"". Toledo Blade. October 18, 1970. Sec. G, p. 7. "The Jungle Book," in it's [sic] initial world-wide release, has grossed $23.8 million to date...
^Murphy, A.D. (October 4, 1967). "The Jungle Book". Variety. p. 6. Archived from the original on March 15, 2018. Retrieved March 14, 2018. It was filmed at a declared cost of $4 million over a 42-month period.
^ abDenisoff, R. Serge; Romanowski, William D. (1991). Risky Business: Rock in Film. Transaction Publishers. ISBN978-0-88738-843-9.
The Graduate: p. 167Archived June 5, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. "World net rental was estimated at more than $85 million by January 1971."
Grease: p. 236Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine. "The film was produced for $6 million and Paramount reportedly spent another $3 million on promotion."
The Graduate: "The Graduate eventually earned U.S. rentals of $44,090,729 on a production cost of $3.1 million to become the most lucrative non-roadshow picture (and independent release) to date."
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: "None of these films was roadshown in the United States; most were set in contemporary America or had a contemporary "take" on the past (the casting of genuine teenagers to play Romeo and Juliet, the urbane sophistication of the dialogue in Butch Cassidy, the antiauthoritarianism of Bonnie and Clyde and MASH); most were produced on modest or medium-sized budgets (as low as $450,000 for Easy Rider and no higher than $6,825,000 for Butch Cassidy); and all grossed upward of $10 million domestically."
Total: Miller, Frank. "2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Articles". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on February 12, 2012. Retrieved August 24, 2011. 2001: A Space Odyssey made $15 million on its initial U.S. release, and currently shows a worldwide gross of over $190 million.
As of 2006: Palmer, R. Barton (2006). "2001: The Critical Reception and the Generation Gap". In Kolker, Robert Phillip (ed.). Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey: New Essays. Oxford University Press. p. 16. ISBN978-0-19-517452-6. With its initial and subsequent releases, domestic and worldwide, Kubrick's arty, intellectual film earned nearly $138 million, which was, at that time, an astounding figure.
2018 re-release: "2001: A Space Odyssey (2018 re-release)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019. Retrieved September 26, 2018. Domestic Total Gross: $1,283,820; Australia: $192,457; Greece: $27,510; Netherlands: $159,068; New Zealand: $5,046; Russia: $155,841; United Kingdom: $296,525
^Welles, Chris (September 7, 1970). "Behind the Silence at Columbia Pictures—No Moguls, No Minions, Just Profits". New York. Vol. 3, no. 36. pp. 42–47. While Columbia, battling Ray Stark over every dollar, did Funny Girl for around $8.8 million, a million or so over budget, Fox spent nearly $24 million on Hello, Dolly!, more than twice the initial budget, and the film will thus have to gross three times as much to break even.
Outside North America: Vanity Fair. 2008. p. 388. Butch Cassidy went on to be a huge hit—by the spring of 1970 it had taken in $46 million in North America and grossed another $50 million abroad.
^D'Alessandro, Anthony (July 15, 2002). "Top 50 worldwide grossers". Variety. p. 52, Paramount at 90 supplement.
^"'Love Story' II: Ryan Redux?". New York. Vol. 9. 1976. p. 389. Bring those handkerchiefs out of retirement. ... After all, the first movie made around $80 million worldwide.
^Block, Hayley Taylor (2010), Love Story, p. 545, The final cost came in at $2,260,000. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^Block & Wilson 2010, p. 549. "Fiddler had the highest domestic box office of 1971 (it was second in worldwide box office after Diamonds Are Forever), with more than $100 million in unadjusted worldwide box office on its initial release. The soundtrack album was also a huge seller. The 1979 rerelease was not as successful, with the $3.8 million print and ad costs almost as high as the $4.3 million in worldwide rentals."
1974: Newsweek. Vol. 84. 1974. p. 74. The original Godfather has grossed a mind-boggling $285 million...
1991: Von Gunden, Kenneth (1991). Postmodern auteurs: Coppola, Lucas, De Palma, Spielberg, and Scorsese. McFarland & Company. p. 36. ISBN978-0-89950-618-0. Since The Godfather had earned over $85 million in U.S.-Canada rentals (the worldwide box-office gross was $285 million), a sequel, according to the usual formula, could be expected to earn approximately two-thirds of the original's box-office take (ultimately Godfather II had rentals of $30 million).
Releases: "The Godfather (1972)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on February 6, 2020. Retrieved January 22, 2020. Original release: $243,862,778; 1997 re-release: $1,267,490; 2009 re-release: $121,323; 2011 re-release: $818,333; 2014 re-release: $29,349; 2018 re-release: $21,701; Budget: $6,000,000
^Stanley, Robert Henry; Steinberg, Charles Side (1976). The media environment: mass communications in American society. Hastings House. p. 76. ISBN978-0-8038-4681-4. ...further reflected by the phenomenal successes of The Sting, Chinatown and The Exorcist. The latter film, which cost about $10 million to produce, has grossed over $110 million worldwide.
^ abPollock, Dale (May 9, 1979). "WB Adds To Its Record Collection". Daily Variety. p. 1. "Towering Inferno" did $56,000,000 overseas in billings while "The Exorcist" totted up $46,000,000
^Hall & Neale 2010, pp. 206–208. "The most successful entry in the disaster cycle was the $15 million The Towering Inferno which earned over $48,650,000 in domestic rentals and about $40 million foreign."
^ abKilday, Gregg (July 5, 1977). "Director of 'Jaws II' Abandons His 'Ship'". The Victoria Advocate. p. 6B.
^Priggé, Steven (2004). Movie Moguls Speak: Interviews With Top Film Producers. McFarland & Company. p. 8. ISBN978-0-7864-1929-6. The budget for the first Jaws was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 214. "Rocky was the "sleeper of the decade". Produced by UA and costing just under $1 million, it went on to earn a box-office gross of $117,235,247 in the United States and $225 million worldwide."
^Block, Alex Ben (2010), Rocky, p. 583, The budget was $1,075,000 plus producer's fees of $100,000. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
^ abcdWuntch, Philip (July 19, 1985). "Return of E.T.". The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on May 17, 2013. Retrieved March 6, 2012. Its worldwide box-office gross was $619 million, toppling the record of $530 million set by Star Wars.
^Hall & Neale 2010, p. 218. "Eventually costing $11,293,151, Star Wars was previewed at the Northpoint Theatre in San Francisco on May 1, 1977."
^Hofler, Robert (2010). Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr. ReadHowYouWant.com. p. 145. ISBN978-1-4596-0007-2. Despite the fact that Grease was well on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie musical in the world, and eventually grossed over $341 million...
United & Babson Investment Report. Vol. 72. Babson-United, Inc. 1980. p. 262. Columbia Pictures Industries is continuing to rake in the box office dollars from its Oscar-winning Kramer vs. Kramer, which has topped $100 million in domestic grosses and $70 million overseas. Kramer, which cost less than $8 million to make, is now the second...
Prince, Stephen (2002). A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980–1989. University of California Press. p. 7. ISBN978-0-520-23266-2. Much of this was attributable to the performance of its hit film, Kramer vs. Kramer ($94 million worldwide and the number two film in the domestic market).
^ abBlock & Wilson 2010, p. 609. "Steven Spielberg, by far the most successful director of the decade, had the highest-grossing movie with 1982's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which grossed over $664 million in worldwide box office on initial release."
^Finler 2003, p. 268. "The studio had a record operating income of $212 million in 1982, the year of Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (which had cost only slightly over $10 million) and $150 million in 1985, mainly due to another Spielberg production, the $22 million Back to the Future, which became the top box office hit of the year."
^McAdams, Frank (2010), Top Gun, pp. 678–679, Production Cost: $19.0 (Millions of $s) ... Despite mixed reviews, it played in the top 10 for an extended period and was a huge hit, grossing almost $345 million in worldwide box office. In: Block & Wilson 2010.
Scott, Vernon (June 15, 1990). "'Three Men and Baby' Sequel Adds Cazenove to Original Cast". The Daily Gazette. New York. Hollywood (UPI). p. 9 (TV Plus – The Daily Gazette Supplement). That legacy is the $167,780,960 domestic box-office and $75 million foreign gross achieved by the original...
^Block & Wilson 2010, pp. 694–695. "Production Cost: $55.4 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s) ... The film went on to haul in over $494 million worldwide."
Lifetime grosses (US & Canada): "The Lion King (1994) – Release Summary". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 29, 2016. Initial: $312,855,561; IMAX: $15,686,215; 3D: $94,242,001
Lifetime grosses (outside U.S. & Canada): Brevert, Brad (May 29, 2016). "'X-Men' & 'Alice' Lead Soft Memorial Day Weekend; Disney Tops $4 Billion Worldwide". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 29, 2016. ...the original release of The Lion King made $450.6 million internationally, an additional $3.8 million with the 2002 IMAX reissue, and another $91.3 million from 2011's 3D reissue for an international total of $545.7 million.
As of 2010: Block & Wilson 2010, p. 764. "Production Cost: $79.3 (Unadjusted $s in Millions of $s)."
Original release (excluding 2009 IMAX reissue): "The Dark Knight". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. LLC. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009. Retrieved October 28, 2012. North America: $531,039,412 (as of January 22, 2009); Overseas: $466,000,000; IMAX re-release: January 23, 2009
2009 IMAX re-release: "Warner Bros. Entertainment Wraps Record-Breaking Year". Warner Bros. January 8, 2009. Retrieved April 22, 2016. With worldwide receipts of $997 million, "The Dark Knight" is currently fourth on the all-time box office gross list, and the film is being re-released theatrically on January 23.
First-run gross and IMAX reissue: Gray, Brandon (February 20, 2009). "Billion Dollar Batman". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved June 7, 2014. The Dark Knight had been hovering just shy of $1 billion for several months and reportedly sat at $997 million when Warner Bros. modestly relaunched it on Jan. 23, timed to take advantage of the announcement of the Academy Awards nominations on Jan. 22.
^The Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 231. 1973. p. 2. As of the end of 1971, GWTW stood as the all-time money-drawing movie, with a take of $116 million, and, with this year's reissues, it should continue to run ahead of the second place contender and all-time kaffee-mit-schlag spectacle.
^New Times. Vol. 2. 1974. Coppola is King Midas, the most individually powerful U.S. filmmaker ." His credits include directing the first Godfather (worldwide earnings: $142 million, ahead of Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music and The Exorcist)... (Online copy at Google Books)
^Harmetz, Aljean (May 18, 1980). "The Saga Beyond 'Star Wars'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 20, 2013. Retrieved January 30, 2012. "Star Wars" has brought 20th Century-Fox approximately $250 million in film rentals ... "Star Wars" grossed $410 million, and his share was enough to allow him to finance its sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back," himself.
