This movie page looks at 125 1976 Top Grossing Movies. Finding box office information for movies made before 1980 is not an easy task. For somebody looking for box office information on 1976 it is very very frustrating. Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 30,000 movies. So we figured we would show all the 1976 movies in our database.
To make this list a movie had to be made in 1976. Obviously many movies (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon) made in 1975 earned box office dollars in 1976. On the other side many movies made in 1976 made money in 1977 and later. This page will looks at 125 1976 Top Grossing Movies. The movies are listed in a massive table that lets you rank the movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.
Drivel Part: So why 1976? There are a couple of reasons….first it was a request from Flora….who happens to have been born in 1976. Secondly …..this was the last year that some of my favorites (John Wayne & Alfred Hitchcock) made movies. And thirdly….our previous yearly UMR pages have been very popular.
Our UMR Top 50 of 1976
1976 Top Grossing Movies Can Be Ranked 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 1976 Top Grossing Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
- Sort 1976 Top Grossing Movies by actual box office grosses (in millions)
- Sort 1976 Top Grossing Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort 1976 Top Grossing Movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each1976 Top Grossing Movies received
- Sort by how many Oscar® wins each 1976 Top Grossing Movies received.
- Sort 1976 Top Grossing Movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR). Our UMR score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
My Main Sources
Source 1: Variety – January 5th, 1977 Pages 14 and 44.
Source 2: Twentieth Century-Fox A Corporate and Financial History by Aubrey Solomon
Source 3: Wikipedia
Source 4: IMDb.com
Source 5: BoxOfficeMojo.com
How the Box Office Numbers were Calculated
Sadly in 1976….BoxOfficeMojo was not around to keep track of box office earnings. Back then earnings seem to be a secret and a secret that needed to be safely locked up. When studios did report box office stats they used “box office rentals”. Box office rentals were the amount of money the studio got back from the theaters. It is NOT the box office gross. Every year the rental to box office gross percentage changed…in 1976 this meant you had to triple the rentals to get the gross….so the multiplier used in this page was 3.0.
My Yearly Review Pages
- 1939 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gone With The Wind
- 1942 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Mrs. Miniver
- 1946 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Best Years of Our Lives
- 1952 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Greatest Show On Earth
- 2011 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Help
- 2012 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Argo
- 2013 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Gravity
- 2014 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? American Sniper
- 2015 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? The Martian
- 2016 Movies Ranked Best to Worst Our movie of the year? Deadpool (currently)
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
So I have seen 3 of these movies. Rocky, The Bad News Bears, and The Gumball Rally. Nice collection of films, I should really sit down and watch some of these others. Especially the Top 10.
Hey Bryan thanks for the tally, visit and comment on this page which is on movies that were made 12 years before you were born. 3 is actually more than I would have guessed. Then again they are all sports related movies so I guess I can figure out why you watched those three movies.
So how about one on my birth year? 1988?
Hey Bryan…I will add that to the list of subjects to do in the future.
I remember seeing it on a night I saw 3 movies summer 79. I was going to Chicago on vacation the next day and saw Hot Stuff, Americathon and Sunburn that night, all in Manhattan. I figured I wouldn’t see anything on vacation. One was at an underground cinema at 15 Columbus Circle aka at the time 1 Gulf & Western Plaza who owned Paramount at the time. Paramount’s offices were way up in the 40th floor vicinity (nice view of Central Park and the city). Now it’s the Trump International Hotel, cinema closed long ago.
Hey Dan….your memory is awesome when it comes to remembering what movies and where you saw the movie at theaters. I have a notebook from the 1980s that I used to write down all the movies I watched….if I saw it in theaters I put an * by the movie. When I am looking at the notebook….many times I say to myself…”I saw that in theaters?” That underground cinema sounds interesting. I would have loved to intern at the Paramount 40th floor…..and look through whatever financial information they had locked up from their yesteryear movies. Good comment.
Hi
I was 17 during most of 1976, I think it was the first year I took any notice of the Oscars, with Jack Nicholson winning for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Because ’76 was the bicentenary of American independence, there was quite a lot of documentaries about American movies, especially old Hollywood. I think it was then when I started becoming interested in American movies. 1976 was a good year for movies, All The President’s Men was a gift for Hoffman and Redford. Network was terrific, Peter Finch won the Oscar but he died before it was released.
But I think Taxi Driver stands out as the real masterpiece of the year.
King Kong was dire and only saved because of some of the cast. And of course, Carrie was another favourite. It’s interesting comparing to the top 20 compared to 40 years later with franchise movies, superheroes and animation. I think Sulley is the only one that wouldn’t be out of place in the 1976.
Hey Chris
1. I was still pretty clueless about movies back then…I remember kids in school talking about Rocky….but that year I was promoting Gus is the greatest movie ever made.
2. So the 200th anniversary got you into American movies….sounds like a good reason to me.
3. My favorite would be All The President’s Men…..I can watch that movie over and over.
4. I recognize Taxi Driver is a classic….but it is so dark and gloomy….makes it hard to watch repeatedly.
5. Kong was a huge hit….I remember people crying at the end of that movie….I remember how impressed everybody was on how Kong looked….yet it later came out that is mainly a guy in a monkey suit.
6. Good point about Sully fitting in. Sequels and computer animated movies were still only a speak in Spielberg’s eye.
Thanks for the visit and the comment.
Hot Stuff is from 1979.
Hey Dan….yep I messed that one up….deleted from the table and fixed the year in my database…thanks for the heads up. I actually saw this movie in theaters….you think I would have remembered it was 1979 and not 1976…lol.