Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) is now the number one movie when it comes to North America box office grosses. The box office success of Star Wars 7 was incredible. But, when you look at the all-time North America ticket sales leaders…..Star Wars: The Force Awakens has not even cracked the Top 10.
So with Star Wars: The Force Awakens now being listed as the biggest box office hit of all-time….we figured it would be interesting to look at the top ticket selling movies of all-time. The following table shows all the movies in our database that sold more than 40 million tickets in North America. If you compare our table to Box Office Mojo’s Adjusted For Inflation Leaders you will see some differences. Box Office Mojo is awesome when looking at movies from 1982 to today. Easily the best source on the internet. Movies made before 1980 are not the strength of Box Office Mojo…as they often use box office rentals versus box office grosses.
We did some massive updates on this page today. The good news is we now have more information on each of these blockbusters. The bad news is our database is not letting us include our estimated ticket sells in the table….so we had to create a second table with those ticket numbers. So if you sort the first table by adjusted domestic gross….it will rank the top box office movies from #1 Gone With The Wind to #275 The Aristocats. To see the estimated ticket sell numbers you have to go to the second table.
All Time Top Ticket Selling Movies Can Be Sorted 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by movie title and movie trailers
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by the stars of the movie
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by how much they earned in adjusted domestic box office (in millions)
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by estimated tickets sold (in millions)
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by critic and audience reviews
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by Oscar nominations and Oscar wins
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movie by UMR Score…..UMR Score combines box office, reviews and awards
That ‘tickets sold’ chart is absolutely fascinating Bruce. The current most successful film in monetary terms, Avatar, isn’t even in the top 10. Star Wars The Force Awakens sold more tickets than Avatar. Titanic remains James Cameron’s most watched film at the cinema.
Will any movie ever catch up with Gone With the Wind and Star Wars (1977) in ticket sales? I dunno, if Avatar, Titanic and Star Wars VII couldn’t manage it, what can? Star Wars IX? Avatar II?
Btw it would be interesting to find out which film sold more tickets on it’s initial release – Star Wars or Gone With the Wind? GWTW had many successful rerelases over the decades right up to the 1970s. Star Wars IV had a very successful rerelease in 1997 in a CGI’d special edition (which was hated by fans and some of the people that worked on it).
Hey Steve
1. My eyes tearing up reading that your are fascinated by a table of stats…..such a proud day for us.
2. I think tickets sold is the best way to compare the movies…..makes you realize how big movies like Sound of Music, The Exorcist and Ben-Hur.
3. Back then a movie like that made America stop and seeing it….now …even a block buster only gets a small portion of the population to see it….just too many other entertainment choices.
4. I would think Star Wars would win the original ticket sales battle with GWTW….it took GWTW decades of re-releases to reach those numbers.
5. Thanks for such nice words about a stat page.
https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/top-movie-ticket-sellers-of-all-time/ This list features the biggest domestic boxoffice hits ever. It calculates the films by adjusting for inflation, population, so-called ‘per capita perchusing trends’ and first release only. Maybe it’s wrong, because Chris Koch commented that the sound of music ‘only’ sold 85 million tickets. And no offence, but I think this list gives a better indication of most succesful films ever.
Hey Jordie….thinking you attached the wrong link…I would be interested in seeing the list…I have seen some that do it that way….but have to admit I disagree with the logic of the thinking. Butts in seats seems to be the best way to calculate the gross…versus per capita purchasing trends. Back in the 1940s everybody went to the movies…if only to get World War 2 information through newsreels….it was a three to four day a week process. Still seeing another list would be fun to see.
https://www.google.nl/search?source=hp&ei=8mONWpaCM6vgkgXJ55Fo&q=waynesthisandthat+all+time+top+20&oq=waynesthisandthat+all+time+top+20&gs_l=psy-ab.3…26.7764.0.8414.41.26.1.0.0.0.573.3169.4j4j3j1j1j1.14.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..26.10.2257…0j0i10k1j0i10i46k1j46i10k1j0i30k1j0i5i30k1j33i160k1j33i21k1.0.m1hVMc6g5z8 I can’t seem to post the link, so I post the google search. It’s the first hit
Hey Jordie….when you include a link…it sends the comment to either my spam area or for approval area…..spammers love this website….so have to have that feature…but I have approved all of your comments. Thanks for the link.
Do you have any information on which countries had cinema in 1997, but didn’t have cinema in 1965?
Hey jordie…..we do not have that information in our database….but seems we might have something on that in one of movie books…..the problem is not sure which book…and we have 100s of them. Will see what we can come up with.
Lawrence of Arabia is showing a UMR Score of 0.00. Just thought you would like to know.
Hey In The Shadows….that issue has been fixed…thanks for the headsup.
Cogerson is struggling this weekend with a version of what I had the last two weekends….but he wanted everyone to know that he is seeing the comments and will respond as quickly as possible. From Las Vegas.