The Billion-Dollar Club: The 10 Highest-Grossing Movies of All Time

The Highest-Grossing Movies of All Time

Worldwide box office, unadjusted for inflation, as of October 2026. Totals include re-releases, and several films are still earning.

Box office records rarely stay put. For most of the last decade the all-time crown has passed between two films, and in 2026 a new Spider-Man movie joined the elite tier. Here are the ten biggest films in cinema history, counting down to the top.

How to Read These Numbers

Three details shape every list like this one. First, the figures are unadjusted, which means a ticket sold in 1997 counts at its 1997 price, not at today’s. Because ticket prices have risen over the decades, newer films have a built-in advantage in a raw ranking, and older titles have to work harder to stay on the chart. Second, the totals include re-releases. A film that returns to theaters adds to its lifetime gross, so a title can climb the list years after its original run, as several entries here have done. Third, a gross is not a profit. The figure reflects total ticket sales, but theaters keep a share of that money, and in some large markets the share that reaches the studio is smaller than in others. The numbers show how many people showed up and what they paid, not how much a studio earned after production and marketing costs.

The tilde next to the Ne Zha 2 figure is a reminder that the very latest totals can vary between trackers, and the same caution applies to any film that is still in theaters. Everything below reflects the figures as of October 2026.

10. The Odyssey (2026), $1.74 billion

Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic is the newest entry on the list, and it has been a sensation. It had passed $1.7 billion worldwide by the time this list was compiled. Its ensemble cast includes Tom Holland. It also became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever, passing Deadpool & Wolverine. It is still in release, so its total may keep climbing.

The source material is one of the oldest stories in Western literature, an ancient poem about a warrior’s long and dangerous journey home after the Trojan War. Nolan had already shown with Oppenheimer that he could draw very large audiences to a serious, adult-oriented film, and this project extends that reputation.

9. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), $1.92 billion

Directed by Jon Watts, No Way Home used a multiverse storyline to bring Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield together on screen. Fans had speculated about that reunion for years. It arrived while theaters were still recovering from the pandemic, and it showed that audiences would turn out in huge numbers for the right event movie.

The film was released in December 2021 and was made through a partnership between Sony and Marvel Studios, a collaboration that let Spider-Man appear alongside characters from the wider Marvel universe. That arrangement is a large part of why the film felt like an event rather than a standard sequel.

8. Avengers: Infinity War (2018), $2.05 billion

Anthony and Joe Russo's film was the first half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's grand finale. It pitted nearly every hero in the franchise against Thanos and ended on a cliffhanger that dominated conversation for months. That buzz helped it past the $2 billion mark.

Thanos, played by Josh Brolin, was built up across several earlier films before taking center stage, and the payoff of that long setup is one reason audiences treated the release as a shared cultural moment. The decision to split the finale into two parts also meant that the wait for the conclusion became part of the marketing.

7. Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015), $2.07 billion

J.J. Abrams brought Star Wars back to theaters under Disney, pairing returning icons with new characters. For over a decade it held the record as the biggest film ever in North America. That record fell in 2026 to Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Disney had acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, and the film was the first installment of the saga released under its ownership. It introduced Daisy Ridley and John Boyega as new leads while bringing back Harrison Ford as Han Solo, a blend of old and new that suited audiences who had grown up with the original trilogy and a generation seeing the saga for the first time.

6. Ne Zha 2 (2025), roughly $2.2 billion

The biggest surprise on the list is a Chinese animated sequel. Directed by Yang Yu, Ne Zha 2 retells a figure from Chinese mythology, and its box office came almost entirely from audiences in China. It is the highest-grossing animated film ever, passing Inside Out 2, and the highest-grossing non-English-language film in history. Trackers differ slightly on how it compares to Titanic, so check the latest numbers if the exact order matters to you.

The film follows the 2019 original and was released around the Lunar New Year holiday, a period when families traditionally go to the cinema in large numbers. Its success shows how powerful a single national market can be when a story draws on a character that audiences already know from folklore.

5. Titanic (1997), $2.26 billion

James Cameron's romance-disaster epic was the first film ever to gross $1 billion, and it held the #1 position for about twelve years. It won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its current total includes several re-releases, most recently in 2023.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the film told an intimate love story against the backdrop of a real historical tragedy. Its long reign at the top, and the fact that it remains in the top five more than a quarter of a century later, is one of the most impressive records on the list.

4. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), $2.33 billion

Thirteen years after the original, Cameron returned to Pandora and set the sequel largely among the planet's oceans. Many expected the gap to dull audience interest, and it didn't. The film dominated the holiday season and confirmed that the franchise still had enormous drawing power.

3. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026), $2.48 billion

Tom Holland's fourth solo outing as Spider-Man, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, is the year's biggest hit so far. Its $72 million in Thursday-night previews and its $169.8 million opening day both broke records previously held by Avengers: Endgame. It is now the highest-grossing Spider-Man film by a wide margin and one of only three superhero films to pass $2 billion. Its domestic total of roughly $948 million also makes it the biggest North American release ever.

Cretton was previously known for directing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and his hiring for a film of this scale was a notable step up in profile. The domestic figure of about $948 million represents roughly 38 percent of the worldwide total, which means the larger share came from audiences outside North America.

2. Avatar (2009), $2.92 billion

Avatar made 3D a mainstream event format and pushed motion-capture technology forward. It was the first film to cross $2 billion, and it held the all-time record for about a decade until Endgame passed it in 2019. A 2021 re-release, driven largely by China, put it back on top. As of early October 2026, it trails Endgame by only about $2 million.

The film starred Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña and introduced the world of Pandora, a setting Cameron has continued to expand across sequels. Its position at number two, within a rounding error of the leader, makes it the most closely watched entry on the list.

1. Avengers: Endgame (2019), $2.93 billion

The Russo brothers closed out a 22-film storyline with a finale built on emotional payoffs, farewells to Iron Man and Captain America, and a huge final battle. It broke opening-weekend records worldwide on release. After the 2026 re-release Avengers: Endgame Encore, it overtook Avatar again, reaching $2.9255 billion. The margin is so small that another Avatar re-release could swap the top two spots once more.

The Ten Films by Decade

Sorting the list by release year reveals how recent the biggest hits are. One film comes from the 1990s, Titanic, and one from the 2000s, Avatar. Three come from the 2010s: The Force Awakens, Infinity War and Endgame. Five come from the 2020s, which are No Way Home, The Way of Water, Ne Zha 2, Brand New Day and The Odyssey. In other words, half the list has been released since 2021, and the decade is not over. Inflation in ticket prices plays a part, but so does the way event films have grown into global releases that open on the same weekend in dozens of countries.

Original Stories Are the Exception

The list is dominated by familiar properties. Seven of the ten films are sequels: No Way Home, Infinity War, The Force Awakens, Ne Zha 2, The Way of Water, Brand New Day and Endgame. One, The Odyssey, adapts an ancient poem. Only two, Titanic and Avatar, are standalone original films at the time of their release, and both were directed by Cameron. That pattern helps explain why studios invest so heavily in established franchises, and it also underlines how unusual Cameron’s achievement is.

Home Markets and Global Audiences

Where a film earns its money varies widely. Brand New Day collected about $948 million in North America out of its $2.48 billion total, so more than 60 percent of its gross came from the rest of the world. Ne Zha 2 is at the other extreme, with a box office that came almost entirely from China. The two examples show that a path to the top ten can run through broad international appeal or through the strength of a single enormous domestic market, and they explain why studios pay close attention to release strategy in every region.

What the list tells us

Cameron still rules. Three of the top five films, Avatar, The Way of Water, and Titanic, are his. A fourth Cameron film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, arrived in late 2025 but sits outside the top ten.

Disney dominates. Disney is behind seven of the ten highest-grossing films ever, through Marvel, Star Wars, and the Fox library it acquired, which includes Avatar and Titanic.

Re-releases shape the top spot. The #1 position has changed hands mainly through re-releases, so rankings at the very top can move quickly.

The map is getting wider. Ne Zha 2 shows that a film aimed at one huge domestic market can reach the global top ten, which would have been hard to imagine a generation ago.

What Could Change the Rankings

Several films on the list are not finished earning, and a few small gaps could reorder the table. At the top, Endgame leads Avatar by only about $2 million, less than a tenth of one percent of either total. At the bottom, The Odyssey would need roughly $180 million more to pass No Way Home at $1.92 billion, a distance that a film still in release could close. In the middle, Ne Zha 2 and Titanic are separated by only a few tens of millions of dollars, which is why trackers disagree on how to order them. Together, the ten films have grossed roughly $22.9 billion, using the rounded figures in the table.

Inflation Changes the Picture

Because the list is unadjusted, it favors recent releases. When ticket prices are adjusted for inflation, the ranking looks very different, and classic films such as Gone with the Wind, released in 1939, are commonly placed at or near the top of those lists. Adjusted charts also tend to give more credit to the original Star Wars, Titanic and Avatar. Neither method is wrong; they answer different questions. The unadjusted list measures which films have generated the most total revenue in dollars, while an adjusted list estimates which films sold the most tickets relative to their era.