Box-Office Top 100 Films of All-Time: Rankings of both US (Domestic) and Worldwide Box-Office blockbusters have been compiled from various recent sources. Rankings based upon theatrical box-office revenue have become a familiar and reliable benchmark to measure a film's success. The domestic rankings, divided into unadjusted and adjusted for inflation,* are based upon theatrical box office receipts (including some theatrical re-release receipts) and do not include video rentals, TV rights, international box office figures, or other revenues. A few other sites post all-time box-office information, including the Internet Movie DataBase, Boxoffice.com, Boxofficemojo.com, and The-numbers.com.
However, it is unfortunate that many really great films aren't included in the top box-office hits of all time, while some really awful films are included. In retrospect, many of the best films that were ever made didn't initially resonate with audiences when originally released, or they didn't have mass box-office appeal. Some were overlooked, or suffered from bad timing, poor marketing strategies, or were too far ahead of the curve, but upon reevaluation have been re-rated as classics or cult films.
The Three Lists:
- The Domestic, Unadjusted (for inflation) list is top heavy with recent films and blockbusters. Many film franchises (such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and the superhero films, etc.) are represented here. There are only a few films that are classics or films from Hollywood's Golden Era in this list. In fact, top-grossing, financially-successful films sometimes rate lower in artistic achievement. Blockbusters with expensive special effects, sequel films, and those with expensive campaign and publicity ads fill many of the positions. (Notice that there are very few pre-2000 films in the unadjusted list.)
- The Domestic, Adjusted (for inflation) list of box-office champs provides rankings that don't vary much from month to month (and therefore doesn't change very often). They are the most interesting collection of films, however, because the list takes into account inflationary factors such as ticket prices and any re-issues or re-releases, and therefore the list is more reflective of a film's actual appeal. The escalating price of theatre tickets would otherwise bias a list of the all-time highest-grossing films to mostly recent releases. [It is inflation-adjusted to the 2020 average ticket price of $9.37. Most pre-1980 pictures achieved their totals through multiple releases.] See more details.
- The Worldwide list takes into account box-office-champs worldwide. In some cases, the gross earnings were made with multiple releases. Currently, less than a tenth of the films were not in the decade of the 2000s or thereafter.
