And James Cameron had one last stocking stuffer: Avatar: The Way of Water, now available on VUDU!Īnd in 2023, Super Mario Bros.

Re-releases of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was enough to get it over the edge, while Spider-Man: No Way Home had no problem swinging over the line! In 2022, Top Gun: Maverick landed in the billion zone, followed by Jurassic World: Dominion‘s slow crawl to the finish line. Marvel took a lighter step, focusing on interconnected stories that create serious FOMO for those who skip the multiplex line, in movies like Avengers, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, and Black Panther. The Dark Knight movies officially ushered in the era of big business for those who take their comic-book moviemaking seriously. The presence of the Jurassic and Star Wars movies, along with Skyfall, shows you can still wring plenty of money out of long-in-the-tooth franchise.

The last Lord of the Rings was rewarded by fans with the highest gross of the trilogy, goodwill that transferred into The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and then evaporated after that. Alice in Wonderland showed the way for Disney and these newfangled live-action remakes. The Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean series each have multiple entries, in the years before the franchises were run into the ground. It’s a compelling window into our era of blockbusters and inflation. Now we’ve compiled all of the movies that have achieved just that and ranked them by Tomatometer. And, of course, you’ll need an audience willing to turn out in droves the world over, from America to Lebanon to Zambia. Cracking a billion dollars globally requires a mighty recipe of the hottest stars, the shiniest filmmaking technology, and an engaging plot with twists and turns that never becomes super-duper complicated. A movie making that minimum seven figures isn’t cool, it’s a box office bomb. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”Īnd in this town, it’s true. We heard it in a Hollywood movie once: “A million dollars isn’t cool.

(Photo by Warner Bros./ courtesy Everett Collection) All 52 Billion-Dollar Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer

Scattershot by Richard Goodwin