Highest-Grossing Films

Highest-grossing films

The two highest-grossing films have both been directed and written by James Cameron.
With a worldwide box-office gross of about $2.8 billion, Avatar is often proclaimed tobe the "highest-grossing" film, but such claims usually refer to theatrical revenues only and do not take account of home video and television income, which can form a significant portion of a film'searnings. Once revenue from home entertainment is factored in it is not immediately clear which film is the most successful. In addition to the $1.8 billion Titanic grossed during its originaltheatrical run, it also earned a further $1.2 billion from video and DVD sales and rentals. While complete sales data is not available for Avatar, it earned $190 million from the sale of 10 million DVD andBlu-ray units in North America, and sold a total of 30 million units worldwide. After home video income is accounted for, both films have earned over $3 billion. Television broadcast rights will alsosubstantially add to a film's earnings, with a film often earning as much as 20–25% of its theatrical box-office for a couple of television runs on top of pay-per-view revenues; Titanic earned $55million from just the US broadcast rights alone for its initial television run (equating to about 9% of its North American gross).
When a film is highly exploitable as a commercial property, itsancillary revenues from merchandising can dwarf its income from direct film sales. Pixar's Cars earned $461 million in theatrical revenues—which was only a modest hit by comparison to other Pixar films—butgenerated merchandise sales approaching $10 billion in the five years after its 2006 release, the most revenue ever generated by a single film.
Only the revenues from theatrical exhibition at theirnominal value are included here, which sees Avatar rank in the top position. Thirteen films in total have grossed in excess of $1 billion worldwide. The films on this chart have all had a theatrical...