Top Hollywood movies of all time

When a film is highly exploitable as a commercial property, its ancillary revenues can dwarf its income from direct film sales.[5] The Lion King earned over $2 billion in box-office and home video sales,[6] but this pales in comparison to the $6 billion earned at box offices around the world by the stage adaptation.[7] Merchandising can be extremely lucrative too: The Lion King also sold $3 billion of merchandise,[8] while Pixar's Cars—which earned $462 million in theatrical revenues and was only a modest hit by comparison to other Pixar films[9]—generated global merchandise sales of over $8 billion in the five years after its 2006 release.[10][11] Pixar also had another huge hit with Toy Story 3, which generated almost $10 billion in merchandise retail sales in addition to the $1 billion it earned at the box office.[12]

On this chart, films are ranked by the revenues from theatrical exhibition at their nominal value, along with the highest positions they attained. Twenty-four films in total have grossed in excess of $1 billion worldwide, of which three have grossed over $2 billion, with Avatar ranked in the top position. All of the films have had a theatrical run (including re-releases) in the 21st century, and films that have not played during this period do not appear on the chart because of ticket-price inflation, population size and ticket purchasing trends not being considered.