Top 5 Movie Franchises of all time

Cafe Society
1
  1. James Bond
  2. Back to the Future
  3. The Avengers (MCU et al)
  4. Mission Impossible
  5. Lord of the Rings (Hobbit et al)

Honorable mention:
Star Wars
Dark Knight

2

My top 13 favorite movie franchises:

  1. Marvel Cinematic Universe
  2. Star Wars
  3. Star Trek
  4. Terminator
  5. Alien/Predator
  6. Robocop
  7. Back to the Future
  8. Mad Max
  9. Planet of The Apes
  10. Rambo
  11. Die Hard
  12. Superman (the series with Christopher Reeve)
  13. Batman (the series with Christian Bale)
3

The Lord of the Rings (but not The Hobbit movies)
The MCU
Toy Story
Underworld (because of Kate Beckinsale in a leather catsuit)
View Askewniverse

4

Francis the Talking Mule.

Kenneth Anger, particularly The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Scorpio Rising.

5
  1. Harry Potter
  2. Star Wars
  3. Star Trek
  4. Lord of the Rings
  5. Alien/Predator

ETA: That’s the order that I think the rest of the world has placed them in, at any rate.

6

Godzilla
Lone Wolf and Cub
Sinbad (Harryhausen movies only)
Tarzan
Zatoichi

7

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Catherine Munro.

Yum.

8

Evil Dead
Lord of the Rings (NOT hobbit)
Alien (The first two were so good that the rest of the crappy ones get in by default)
Terminator(same deal as Alien)
Police Story (same deal as above, but 3 is tolerable)
Mad Max
Machete

9

Seems relevant: 10 Highest-Grossing Movie Franchises of All Time (per Mental Floss) http://mentalfloss.com/article/70920/10-highest-grossing-movie-franchises-all-time

From the article: Here are the 10 highest-grossing movie franchises of all time, based on worldwide box office stats, courtesy of The Numbers. [ED: These are obviously not corrected for inflation. Which would be an interesting project, or just go by gross numbers of tickets sold.]

  1. MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE
    Worldwide Gross: $15,482,764,918

  2. STAR WARS
    Worldwide Gross: $8,926,772,232

  3. HARRY POTTER
    Worldwide Gross: $8,532,684,345

  4. JAMES BOND
    Worldwide Gross: $7,077,929,291

  5. THE LORD OF THE RINGS
    Worldwide Gross: $5,895,804,182

  6. FAST AND THE FURIOUS
    Worldwide Gross: $5,139,434,105

  7. X-MEN [this really should be in the MCU, but 20th Century Fox owns a piece of them so…]
    Worldwide Gross: $5,016,911,347

  8. SPIDER-MAN [ditto, though I don’t know why this gets it’s own category. Jesus, there have been a ton of superhero movies.]
    Worldwide Gross: $4,858,774,307

  9. BATMAN
    Worldwide Gross: $4,572,000,197

  10. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
    Worldwide Gross: $4,505,013,091

I’m stunned Transformers aren’t on this list.

10

Caroline, not Catherine. Your sentiment is otherwise accurate.

11

Star Trek
Star Wars
MCU
James Bond
Godzilla

Harry Potter also maybe?

12

James Bond
Indiana Jones
Warren Miller films, all 3,574,610 of them, that are all exactly the same
Dirty Harry
The Spaghetti Westerns

13

Would be interesting to know how many films are in each of these groups. How many Marvel universe films have there been? I have no idea. With Star Wars, are we just talking about the ones with Episode numbers, or all the other movies? Does the LOTR franchise include the Hobbit movies? And I’d have to look up how many Bond, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean movies there have been.

14

1 - Star Wars
2 - Alien
3 - Indiana Jones
4 - The Lord of the Rings
5 - James Bond

Showing my age I guess, but while I’ve seen quite a few enjoyable films, or even franchises since the most recent one on my list came out, none has recaptured the feelings of wonder, terror or fun that these had.

15

The article is from April of this year, and appears to be broadly inclusive in its definitions of those franchises (i.e., they’re including Rogue One with the Star Wars franchise, Fantastic Beasts with Harry Potter, the Hobbit films in with LotR, etc.)

It notes that there had, at that point, been 19 films in the MCU (the article was written just as Infinity War had premiered, but before Ant-Man and the Wasp had been released).

Edit: there have been 26 Bond films, to date, though that number appears to include the 1967 Casino Royale, which is of questionable canon. :slight_smile:

16

From that list of the top-grossing franchises, Disney has at least $30 billion of that, between the Marvel, Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean movies. And if you add the theme park rides, TV shows and merchandising, those three represent probably more than fifty billion in revenues. That’s over time, of course, but it’s a staggering number. And remember that Disney bought Marvel and Lucasfilm for about four billion each, so those are almost certainly very profitable investments.