A top-grossing movie is a motion picture that has received the most total revenue compared to all other movies ever made. Sources of these revenues include; ticket sales, merchandise and video rentals.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Highest-grossing adjusted for inflation 3 External Links |
Here are the top 25 grossing movies of all time, based only on total worldwide box office receipts to January 6, 2004.
Note that the majority of these movies are in the genres of science fiction or fantasy.
Top 25 highest-grossing films not adjusted for inflation
| 1 | Titanic (1997) | $1,835,300,000 |
| 2 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone (2001) | $968,600,000 |
| 3 | Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) | $922,300,000 |
| 4 | Jurassic Park (1993) | $919,700,000 |
| 5 | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) | $918,600,000 |
| 6 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) | $866,300,000 |
| 7 | The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | $860,200,000 |
| 8 | Independence Day (1996) | $811,200,000 |
| 9 | Spider-Man (2002) | $806,700,000 |
| 10 | Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) | $797,900,000 |
| 11 | The Lion King (1994) | $783,400,000 |
| 12 | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) | $756,700,000 |
| 13 | Finding Nemo (2003) | $748,900,000 |
| 14 | ''The Matrix Reloaded (2003) | $735,600,000 |
| 15 | Forrest Gump (1994) | $679,400,000 |
| 16 | The Sixth Sense (1999) | $661,500,000 |
| 17 | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) | $652,200,000 |
| 18 | Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) | $647,300,000 |
| 19 | The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) | $614,300,000 |
| 20 | Men in Black (1997) | $587,200,000 |
| 21 | Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) | $572,700,000 |
| 22 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | $558,800,000 |
| 23 | Armageddon (1998) | $554,600,000 |
| 24 | Mission: Impossible II (2000) | $545,300,000 |
| 25 | Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) | $533,800,000 |
- Amounts are in United States dollars, include ticket sales only, and are not adjusted for inflation. Movies such as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope may well have earned more than more recent films such as Independence Day when adjusted for inflation. Given population growth as well as inflation, these numbers are not a very good indicator of the popularity of movies over time.
Highest-grossing adjusted for inflation
This is a list of the highest-grossing movies of all time, where "gross" is defined as
- worldwide box-office revenues in U.S. dollars
- adjusted for the effects of inflation using the U.S. consumer price index for January of the year of release (except for long runners, see below)
The adjustment for inflation better reflects the importance of older films, as lists compiled without adjustment for inflation will consist almost entirely of films released in the last 20 years.
Note that this may tend to overstate the ranking of films that have long runs or repeated re-releases -- however, any film that can sustain such a long run is important in itself. Therefore, for "long runners" (defined as: the classic Disney children's films, Gone with the Wind and The Rocky Horror Picture Show) the gross has been smoothed over the entire time from release to date to try to correct for this bias, and corrected for inflation for each year in which revenue is booked.
This has the effect of moving these films down the list. For example, Gone with the Wind moves down the list to #3 from #1 before, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show drops out of the top 100 entirely.
Film List
See Also: List of top-grossing movies in the United States for lists not adjusted for inflation.
