By USA Today made a good point today: the Harry Potter series is about to pass up Star Wars as the most profitable movie franchise ever to grace domestic film theaters. They used BoxOfficeMojo for their research, so I decided to look into the numbers myself. Hit the jump to read through the full breakdown of the movie franchises that have made more than a billion dollars domestically, along with some speculation on some of USA Today’s misleading data.
USA Today made a good point today: the Harry Potter series is about to pass up Star Wars as the most profitable movie franchise ever to grace domestic film theaters. They used BoxOfficeMojo for their research, so I decided to look into the numbers myself. Hit the jump to read through the full breakdown of the movie franchises that have made more than a billion dollars domestically, along with some speculation on some of USA Today's misleading data.{{page_break}}
Here's the breakdown:
- Star Wars: 1,918.0 (7? 14?)
- Harry Potter: 1,713.1 (6)
- James Bond: 1,608.5 (23)
- Batman: 1,449.7 (7)
- Shrek: 1,270.0 (4)
- Spider-Man: 1,113.8 (3)
- Star Trek: 1,013.3 (11)
- Lord of the Rings: 1,060.7 (3)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: 1,038.2 (3)
The numbers in the parenthesis are how many films those profits consist of, though I found the USA Today article to be slightly misleading. Even the franchise section of the site lists Star Wars as having seven films, and then clicking on it shows there are actually 14 total theater release instances in which its total number comes from.
Either way, it's no surprise that the next Harry Potter film will put it on top with ease, and may even win it other opening weekend records. I think the funniest statistic of all is that once the Avatar sequel comes out, it will jump to fourth or fifth spot on the list!