Between 1995 and 2025, a movie based on comics or graphic novels grossed, on average, about 88.36 million U.S. dollars across the United States and Canada – collectively known as the North American box office. Spin-offs followed as the second-most commercially successful film source material, with average box office revenue of around 86.32 million dollars.

In 2019, Avengers: Endgame overtook 2009's Avatar as the highest grossing film of all time at the international Box Office. The difference between Endgame and Avatar's totals was fewer than 100 million dollars by the end of 2019, yet Avatar re-took the top spot in 2021 due to theatrical re-releases in China; this gap is likely to grow in the coming years as Avatar will be shown again in theaters prior to the release of it's four sequels (the first of which was released in 2022). Before Avatar, the record had been held by 1997's Titanic (also directed by James Cameron). When adjusted for inflation, 1939's Gone With the Wind is generally cited as the most successful film of all time, with a total gross between three and four billion (including theatrical re-releases) - however, Gone With the Wind is estimated to have sold fewer tickets than Avatar, Star Wars, Titanic, and many Chinese releases. Recent developments The highest grossing film of 2020 was The Eight Hundred, which took over 460 million dollars worldwide; the first ever non-Hollywood production to feature on this list. The significant drop off in global revenues in 2020 was due to the Covid-19 pandemic, where lockdowns saw thousands of movie theaters close across the world. Varying restrictions per country saw Asian markets eventually overtake North American and European markets as the largest worldwide, and five of the ten highest grossing films in 2020 were either Chinese or Japanese productions. The pandemic also accelerated the trend of major releases coming to streaming platforms, and 2021 saw many of the previous year's postponements released simultaneously in theaters and online (often at a premium). It remains to be seen what the dominant method of big-budget releases will be in the coming years, as major studios such as Disney may look to draw consumers to their streaming platforms, however a strong domestic performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home in late-2021 shows optimism for the box office. Recurring figures Throughout the list, many of the same directors and actors appear in multiple films. Stephen Spielberg has directed more of these films than any other director, with six titles to his name. Cecil B. DeMille, a "founding father" of American Cinema, and Disney's Hamilton Luske, have each directed (or co-directed) five movies on this list. 2012's Frozen is the only film made by a woman director; Jennifer Lee, and until 2020, Mission: Impossible 2 was the only film made by a non-white director; John Woo. Looking at those in front of the camera, Harrison Ford, through his roles in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, has appeared in the highest number of films listed here; featuring in seven titles. His Star Wars co-star, Carrie Fisher, has appeared in five films listed here, more than any other actress. When looking at the companies behind the films featured on this list, we can see that Disney and Paramount Pictures (in all of their forms) have each produced and/or distributed 24 of the films on this list, at the time of their release. Disney dominates Since 1999, all but one of the highest grossing films were sequels or part of franchises. Although this is not a new trend in Hollywood, the box office pull of such "extended universes" has exploded in recent years, and these films dominate the annual lists; Disney in particular has been the most successful studio in this regard. After acquiring Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012, in deals worth 4.24 billion and 4.05 billion dollars respectively, Disney built upon its position as the largest entertainment company in the world and has dominated the international box office over the last decade. With the continued success of the Marvel and Star Wars universes and the expansion of these products in series form, along with a number of planned live action remakes and Pixar titles, it is likely that Disney films will feature at the top of this list for years to come.

As of March 2024, "Avatar" (2009) was the most commercially successful movie of all time, grossing about 2.92 billion U.S. dollars at box offices across the globe. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) and "Avatar: The Way of Water " (2022) followed, with revenues of around 2.8 billion and 2.32 billion dollars, respectively.

Franchises and the pandemic impact In 2021, worldwide box office revenue grew by over 80 percent and reached 21.3 billion dollars. Yet the figure amounts to less than 51 percent of the value recorded in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet the success of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021) suggests that the performance of major movie franchises at the box office may continue strong in a post-pandemic scenario. The format, which includes cases like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, has been a safe bet for Hollywood as it tends to pursue fans already interested in films part of consolidated brands.

U.S. & Canada as a movie market Moviegoers in Canada and the U.S. usually turn to the largest players of this industry. North American cinema circuits such as AMC, Cineworld, Cinemark, and Cineplex have over 1.5 thousand sites spread across the two countries. Historically, movie genres like adventure and action attract most of the audience in the U.S. and Canada. Meanwhile, niches such as horror, romantic comedy (romcoms), and musicals rely largely on the most enthusiastic fans of each segment.

The annual global revenue of the ten highest grossing independent movies has been fluctuating over the past decade. After reaching its lowest value yet in 2020, independents recorded an all-time high three years later with a box office revenue of 1.63 billion U.S. dollars. In 2024, the industry recorded a revenue loss of 18 percent in comparison to the previous year.

This statistic shows the box office revenue of CGI, 3D and animated movies in the United States from 2008 to 2018. According to RenderThat, the total revenue in the U.S. for all movies containing CGI (computer-generated imagery), animation and 3D effects amounted to 5.87 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.

Between 1995 and 2024, PG-13-rated movies grossed approximately 126.64 billion U.S. dollars at the North American box office – a term that excludes Mexico and includes Canada and the United States. R-rated and PG-rated films grossed around 69.28 billion and 56.04 billion dollars, respectively.

As of July 2023, "Barbie" was the highest-grossing movie of the year, as well as one of the two pictures exceeding the one-billion U.S. dollars revenue mark. In second place was "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", which became the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever released.

The source forecast that, by the end of 2022, the annual revenue of the global film production and distribution industry would amount to 76.7 billion U.S. dollars. As of mid-2022, the sector employed almost 389 thousand people in a little more than 57 thousand businesses worldwide. China, the North American market (a term that includes the United States and Canada and excludes Mexico), and Japan were the world's leading box office markets by revenue in 2021.

As of February 2025, "Incredibles 2" (2018) was the highest-grossing animated feature film in the history of the North American box office, which consists of Canada and the United States. The movie – directed and written by Brad Bird – grossed almost 609 million U.S. dollars across the two countries. Disney distributed seven of the top 10 films in this category. Beyond Disney Despite being released under the Disney umbrella, the “Incredibles 2” movie is a Pixar production. After years of collaboration, Disney announced the purchase of the animation studio in 2006, making it an official subsidiary. However, ‘Shrek 2’ is the most successful animated feature movie at the North American box office that is not created or distributed by Disney. The Shrek franchise, which includes four main movies, two spin-offs, and a television series, is DreamWorks Animation’s most lucrative yet. Pokémon is the most successful anime movie franchise Despite not reaching the same heights as their American counterparts in the box office, Japanese anime movies are popular with North American audiences. The first Pokémon movie, 1999’s “Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back” grossed 85.75 million U.S. dollars at the box office and was the highest grossing Japanese anime movie as of February 2025. More than 30 percent of American adults were interested in seeing a film or a TV adaptation of the Pokémon franchise, slightly more than Dragon Ball Z or Naruto. Japanese animation is appreciated by all consumers of all ages in the United States. Millennials accounted for 42 percent of anime fans as of 2022, whereas a quarter of them were Gen Zers.

Between 1995 and 2024, adventure was the highest-grossing movie genre at the so-called North American box office, which consists of Canada and the United States (including the unincorporated territories of Guam and Puerto Rico). Adventure films recorded a box office revenue of more than 67 billion U.S. dollars within that period. Action movies followed with more than 60 billion dollars in revenue. Cinema: releases versus revenue Titles with adventure and action elements are also on the top on a global scale. "Avatar" (2009) and "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) are the most commercially successful movies of all time, each grossing around 2.8 billion dollars worldwide. In terms of production, however, historically, the North American market has plenty of dramas, comedies, and documentaries. These were the top three genres of movie released in the U.S. and Canada between 1995 and the beginning of 2023. Will the cinema market fully recover? The film industry in the U.S. faced unparalleled challenges after the COVID-19 pandemic led to preventive lockdowns across the globe. It remains to be seen if the demand for movies on the big screen will reach the same levels recorded before the outbreak. The number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada increased by more than 60 percent between 2021 and 2022, when it surpassed 813 million. Still, the latter figure amounted to less than 70 percent of the nearly 1.23 billion tickets sold in 2019.

Throughout 2024, the action movie genre accounted for almost 29 percent of the box office revenue in the United States and Canada, collectively known as the North American film market. Adventure, which historically tends to lead the market, ranked second with around 25 percent and comedy ranked third with around 10.02 percent in 2024.

In 2023, the average length of the top 10 highest-grossing movies in the United States and Canada amounted to 143 minutes (or two hours and 23 minutes). This figure is almost 30 minutes higher than the average recorded in 2020. "Avatar: The Way of Water" was the longest movie in 2023's top 10, with three hours and 12 minutes. The longest film in 1990 was "Ghost" with two hours and seven minutes.

In 2023, the highest-grossing film worldwide was "Barbie", with a box office revenue of around 1.45 billion U.S. dollars. This corresponds to about a half of the revenue generated by "Avengers: Endgame" two years earlier: about 2.8 billion dollars. This makes "Avengers: Endgame" one of the most commercially succesful movies of all time.

During the weekend ending on November 8, 2024, the action movie "Venom: The Last Dance" was the highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, collectively known as the North American movie market. Its box office revenue amounted to 16 million U.S. dollars. The North American box office after the pandemic The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak persists in the arguably most influential market worldwide. Box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada stood slightly below nine billion dollars in 2023 – more than three billion less than the value recorded in 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cinema attendance experienced a very similar trajectory. The number of movie tickets sold in Canada and the U.S. amounted to little more than 825 million in 2023. Between 1980 and 2019, it had always surpassed a billion. The struggle of Canada's cinema When looking only at the northernmost country part of the North American movie market, the post-pandemic recovery was even slower. Box office gross in Canada amounted to around 600 million Canadian dollars in 2023, roughly only two thirds of the result seen in 2019. It is possible that the audience remained cautious after the coronavirus outbreak. As of mid-2021, nearly 70 percent of people aged 14 and above said in a survey that they did not go to a movie theater in Canada throughout the past 12 months.

In 2024, 55 horror movies were released in Canada and the United States, the highest value recorded since 2000. In 2024, horror movies accounted for about 10 percent of the box office, a share that more than doubled in comparison to 2013, a decade earlier.

The statistic above presents the most successful movies at the global box office in 2016. According to the source, "Captain America: Civil War" was the highest grossing movie of 2016, with a worldwide box office revenue of over 1.15 billion U.S. dollars.

In 2023, "Barbie" – distributed by Warner Bros. – was the highest-grossing movie at the box office in the United States and Canada, with a domestic revenue of about 636.23 million U.S. dollars. In second and third place, Universal Pictures' "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" grossed around 574.93 million and 381.31 million at the domestic box office, respectively.

The statistic shows the most popular movie genres among adults in the United States as of December 2018, sorted by ethnicity. The findings reveal that romantic comedies and musicals were less popular with Hispanics than with respondents in other ethnic groups, and 20 percent more African Americans than White U.S. adults had a very or somewhat favorable attitudes towards the horror genre.

As of January 2025, the Marvel Cinematic Universe series was the highest-grossing film franchise with total worldwide box office revenue of 31.06 billion U.S. dollars. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) was Marvel's highest-grossing movie with 2.8 billion dollars in global revenue. The "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" series followed with worldwide box office revenues of about 10.32 billion and 9.56 billion dollars, respectively. May the profit be with you The Star Wars series started in the late 1970s and has captured the attention of nerds and moviegoers in general ever since. Released just before the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest film of the saga, "The Rise of Skywalker," recorded a global box office revenue of over one billion dollars. This is almost four times more than the production of the movie had cost. The success of the franchise goes beyond the realm of cinema. The video game Star Wars: Squadrons, for instance, sold over one million digital copies worldwide in the first month of its release in October 2020. Fantastic box offices: where to find them again? While Star Wars has a history of peaks and valleys, the Harry Potter franchise seems to be jinxed since the launching of its prequel series, Fantastic Beasts. The box office revenue of "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" (2018) stood below 655 million dollars worldwide. This is the lowest revenue generated by a movie from the Harry Potter universe since the brand debuted on the big screen in 2001. The amount is also nearly 20 percent below the global box office of its predecessor, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (2016).

As of 2019, around half of people with an income of less the 50 thousands dollars per year state that they typically do not see any movies in theatres each month. The middle income group (those that make between 50 and 100 thousand dollars per year) has the highest average for monthly theatre visits, with over 60 percent seeing at least one film per month. The obvious constraints to movie consumption are likely related to income and free time. Middle income level consumers seem to represent the optimal balance between these two constraints which allows for the greatest movie consumption.