The Highest Grossing Hollywood Movies of All Time

For the first time in history, the film industry made over $100 billion in 2019. Of that, $42.2 billion was at the box office and another $58.8 billion from home and mobile entertainment platforms.

The U.S. and Canada were second in regards to box office gross and number of movie tickets sold in 2021, beaten only by China in both categories. However, the combined market share of the "Big Five" major film studios in this region--including Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.--own 79.2% of the market share. Additionally, all of the most expensive film productions in history were made by or in collaboration with American studios.

Over half of Hollywood's 939 highest grossing movies were released in only 4 months: June, July, November, and December. This phenomenon is due to the fact that since movies generally cost the same in theaters regardless of plot, genre, rating, or popularity, a movie's release date is one of the main ways in which studios compete financially with each other. As such, these timing decisions, which are focused halfway through and at the end of the year--correlating to summer school breaks and the holiday season, respectively--creates a seasonal pattern of release dates.

With super succesful movie franchises such as Marvel, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and more, nearly all of which are rated PG-13 and tagged as "action" and/or "adventure," it comes as no surprise that these are the most common ratings and genres among Hollywood's highest grossing movies.

From the list of 939 of the highest grossing Hollywood movies, ranging from 1938 to 2022, only 38 (4%) were released before 1990, and 195 (20.8%) were released in the '90s. In 2019 alone, the year in which the film industry amassed over $100 billion, 35 (3.7%) movies made it to the highest grossing list, 9 of which were in the top 50.

However, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, only 3 (0.3%) movies made it to list. The following year, when restrictions began to lessen and the COVID vaccine became more wildly available, the movie industry picked up some, and as such, 17 (1.8%) movies made it to the top list. Though there are 2 months left of this year and some of the movies are still in theaters, already 21 (2.2%) movies have been added to the top 939 highest grossing Hollywood movies of all time.