All the highest grossing movie franchises of all time in one convenient list of the top grossing movie franchises ever. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is by far the highest grossing film series ever, but franchises like Star Wars, James Bond, and X-Men, which all churn out movies to high opening weekends, each have billions of dollars in box office sales.
Most of the film franchises on this list are regarded as some of the best movie franchises ever as well as some of the best movies of all time, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that some of these movie series have pulled in over a billion dollars at the domestic box office alone.
How do we calculate the figures that determine a series' position on this list of the highest grossing movie series ever? All the movies that share similar characters are lumped into the grand total and put in order on the list. For example: all movies that feature the James Bond character but with different actors (Skyfall, Dr. No, Tomorrow Never Dies) all fall under the James Bond franchise. Now, it gets trickier when you consider something like The Avengers, which isn't on here since the individual characters all have their own movie franchises. All incarnations of The Hulk, for instance, would be part of a Hulk franchise. Complicated.
If you want to have a look at some of the up and coming movie franchises (ones that will eventually have three movies like The Hangover and The Hunger Games, take a look at the complete list of movie franchises at The-Numbers.com.
