Dark Knight Passes Star Wars

James Joyner · Tuesday, August 12, 2008 · 5 comments

Dark Knight is about to pass Star Wars — which had two independent releases of what were arguably two different movies — to become the number two grossing movie of all time. It still has a ways to go, though, to pass Titanic:

Rank	Title(click to view)	Studio	Lifetime Gross	Year
1	Titanic	Par.	$600,788,188	1997
2	Star Wars	Fox	$460,998,007	1977^
3	The Dark Knight	WB	$441,628,497	2008
4	Shrek 2	DW	$441,226,247	2004
5	E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial	Uni.	$435,110,554	1982^
6	Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace	Fox	$431,088,301	1999
7	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest	BV	$423,315,812	2006
8	Spider-Man	Sony	$403,706,375	2002
9	Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith	Fox	$380,270,577	2005
10	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	NL	$377,027,325	2003
11	Spider-Man 2	Sony	$373,585,825	2004
12	The Passion of the Christ	NM	$370,782,930	2004^
13	Jurassic Park	Uni.	$357,067,947	1993
14	The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	NL	$341,786,758	2002^
15	Finding Nemo	BV	$339,714,978	2003
16	Spider-Man 3	Sony	$336,530,303	2007
17	Forrest Gump	Par.	$329,694,499	1994
18	The Lion King	BV	$328,541,776	1994^
19	Shrek the Third	P/DW	$322,719,944	2007
20	Transformers	P/DW	$319,246,193	2007
21	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone	WB	$317,575,550	2001
22	Iron Man	Par.	$316,468,817	2008
23	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	NL	$314,776,170	2001^
24	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	Par.	$314,749,809	2008
25	Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones	Fox	$310,676,740	2002^

To be sure, “unadjusted gross” is a rather silly metric. After all, ticket prices have skyrocketed in recent years. That’s offset somewhat, however, by the fact that new movies are released to DVD within months (or available for download from various Torrent sites much sooner) and many of us choseto wait to watch them in the comfort of our own homes.

Hat tip to Jonathan Last, who has some other interesting movie ranking trivia.

Comments

Houston says:

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 10:50

Hmmmm…. Look at the only R-rated movie on that list.
yetanotherjohn says:

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 10:53

Look at that list of movies.

#1 is a chick flick writ large.

#7 and #24 fall under the action/adventure genre.

#12 is a Christian epic.

#17 is a comedy.

#2, #5, #6, #9, #13 and #25 are sci-fi

#3, #8, #11, #16, #20, and #22 are comic books brought to the screen.

#4, #10, #14, #19, #21 and #23 are fantasy films.

#15 and #18 are harder to classify. Are they children morality tales or another form of fantasy film.

So roughly 1/5 of the top grossing movies is something other than sci-fi/fantasy/comic book themed movies.
Dan says:

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 12:58

What does this list look like when the dollars are adjusted for inflation?
Anderson says:

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 14:55

Yah, if it ain’t inflation-adjusted, it’s worthless.
Bryan says:

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 17:00

Why is so much emphasis placed on the dollar amount when comparing a movie’s success? Doesn’t ANYONE out there realize that new movies are going to keep topping each other because the price of tickets keeps going up? Let’s review how many ticket sales it took to reach the 460 million dollars the original Star Wars earned, at roughly $2.00 per ticket, compared to the $10 ticket price of Dark Knight. C’mon people…there is NO comparison.

Outside the Beltway