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
Can we have a listing of top movies based on number of tickets sold in the first year of US release only?
Hey fibnotnow….currently….my database does not allow me to do that. The above numbers do try and show movies that got re-released with the correct box office from all the releases.. Some of the Disney movies collected their massive totals over many decades…..the same with Gone With The Wind. Maybe one day we will figure out a way to separate the numbers. Our Gone With The Wind page does show the breakdown we calculated. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/gone-with-the-wind-1939/
Do you account in your calculation of the number of tickets sold for the fact that children’s prices used to be a small fraction (eg. 10-20%) of adult prices? If not, the calculation for early Disney pictures would be very understated. At the other end, do you account for pictures that were initially sold with reserved seats at about double the normal adult price at that time? If not, their tickets sold numbers are overstated dramatically.
Hey Ken….we use the average ticket price for the year…..the pricing structures are different everywhere…..you can use the current way movie tickets are sold….you have 3D prices, you have XD prices, you have matinee prices, you have peak prices, you have second run theaters…also in my area….there are 8 cities within 30 minutes of each other….and they all charge different prices. Sadly back then (pre-1980)…..they did not want to share the information…..so we are left with producing rough estimates. We are constantly tweaking our formula….but at this stage (8 years of research)….those changes rarely see any drastic changes. Will the actual grosses ever appear? Not thinking they will….so we are left to use the average ticket cost for the year for every theater. Do we have the correct estimated gross?…..absolutely not….but I think we get in the neighborhood. Thanks for the question.
FYI….all of our Disney classic animated grosses come Box Office Mojo…..they of course do not have it 100% correct either. Good question.
Hello Bruce, just for info, “The Shaggy Dog” is missing on your list, you put this movie at 376 000 000 $ in your 1959 yearly review so it should also be here…
Thanks 😉
You also forgot “A Star Is Born” from 1976 …
Hey Max…..thanks for the heads up…..seems that the movies between $350 and $400 are always fluctuating…..I might have to move this list to 300 movies versus the current 250 movies…..and then they will be included. This is only a partially dynamic page…..as I have to manually include the movie into the database subject……the same thing goes for the Worldwide Movies page….as Deadpool 2 and The Poseidon Adventure (just found the international gross) need to be added to that page.
How can a film made in the ’30s that earned $385 million adjusted for inflation not sell enough tickets to hit this list? Movie tickets didn’t cost very much.
Hey Joan….if a movie made $385 million in adjusted domestic box office….it should be on the list…..which movie is not on the list…..looking at my database….I do not have a movie made in the 1930s with that much money…Alexander’s Ragtime Band is on the list with $398 million and Boys Town with $375 million are on the list. Which movie are we missing…..as we would greatly like to fix this problem.
Hey Joan…..currently we have 11 movies on the list that were made in the 1930s…go year by year to see if we missed any that grossed over $350 million.
Just went through the 10 years….In Old Chicago is the highest 1930s movie not on the list…as it comes in 304th place. We used a cut off of $350 million.
Thanks for the feedback…it is greatly appreciated…..and just so you know we do requests if you see a movie subject that we have not covered.
gotcha – thanks for replying with all you have to do!
You are welcome…sorry we made so confusing.
Too much to ask for ranking numbers in front of each listing?
Like #1 Gone with the wind etc.
Hey Jon….our IT department is on it.
IT department has heard you, Jon. Enjoy.
Thank you WoC….it is much easier to read this massive table now…you are awesome!
Cool, thanks very much, I appreciate your efforts. ??