Highest Grossing Movies 1950 - 2018

INTRODUCTION

Whether a movie is considered successful or not is primarily determined by how much it earns at the box office although there are other measures of success. The highest grossing movies aren’t necessarily considered the best movies even among audiences and the types of films which becoming the highest grossing movies have changed a lot over the decades.

This page mainly looks at the 5 highest grossing movies each year from 1950 to 2018 and how well they they were rated. The grosses are in North America from 1950 to 1988 and worldwide from 1989 to 2018 due to availability and completeness of information.

Charts

1. Genre of 5 Highest Grossing Films Worldwide by Year 1990 – 2018

2. Average RT score of 5 Highest Grossing Films Worldwide by Year 1990 – 2018

3. Cinemascore rating of 5 Highest Grossing Films Worldwide by Year 1989 – 2018

4. Best Picture Performance of 5 Highest Grossing Films Worldwide by Year 1990 – 2018

Data Table

5. Gross Revenue, Genre, Source, Best Picture Oscar and Rotten Tomatoes Score for Top 5 Grossing Movies Per Year 1950 – 2018

Actions movies, which were dominant in the mid 90s including movies such as Speed and Mission Impossible, seem to have declined sharply among the highest grossing movies. Thriller movies had a very strong presence in the early 90s with movies such as Silence of the Lambs and The Fugitive but no thriller films have made the top 5 in the last 10 years. Only 1 western movie has been among the top 5 grossing movies in the period, Dances with Wolves. The genre was one of the most popular in the mid 20th century with movies as as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The 2010s have been dominated by Superhero and Animated movies although animated movies have been well represented from the 1990s to present with Disney films such as the Lion King and Aladdin. The rise of the Superhero genre is far more sudden. Superhero movies have been dominated by the rivalry between movies based on Marvel and DC comics. The Fantasy genre has had a strong presence in the 21st century with the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean accounting for much of them. The rise of the superhero genre and the fantasy genre is in large part a reflection in the growth in the use of CGI (Computer generated imagery) in the film industry. It is a result of this but it has also driven the technology as well.

Rotten Tomatoes is a website which collects critics reviews and assigns reviews as “fresh” or “rotten” and counts how many of each a film receives. 60% or more “fresh” reviews, a movie is rated as “fresh”. Below 60%, it is rated as “rotten”. It tends to show the overall approval of the film.

In 1992, the average Rotten Tomatoes scores for the 5 highest grossing movies was quite low and only 1 of the top 5, Aladdin, had a fresh rating. This was followed in 1993 by a very strong convergence of commercial and critical success where 4 of the highest grossing movies were rated over 90% including the Spielberg directed movies Jurassic Park and Schindler’s list. 1994 was also a very strong year with the 91% rated animated classic The Lion King being the highest grossing movie.There was a gradual increase from the 1996 till 2005, followed by a major dip in 2006 where none of the top 3 grossing movies were rated fresh including the 25% rated Da Vinci Code. Afterwards there has been an increase again reaching a peak in 2016 where the average was over 90%, including 3 animated movies.