Gone with the Wind held the record of highest-grossing film for 25 years, and, adjusted for inflation, has earned more than any other film.

Films generate income from several revenue streams including , home video, television broadcast rights and merchandising. However, theatrical box office earnings are the primary metric for trade publications (such as Box Office Mojo and Variety) in assessing the success of a film, mostly due to the availability of the data compared to sales figures for home video and broadcast rights, and also due to historical practice. Included on the list are charts of the top box-office earners (ranked by both the nominal and real value of their revenue), a chart of high-grossing films by calendar year, a timeline showing the transition of the highest-grossing film record, and a chart of the highest-grossing film franchises and series. All charts are ranked by international theatrical box office performance where possible, excluding income derived from home video, broadcasting rights and merchandise.

Traditionally, war films, musicals and historical dramas have been the most popular genres, but franchise films have been the best performers in the 21st century, with films from the Harry Potter, Middle-Earth and Pirates of the Caribbean series dominating the top end of the list. There has also been new interest in the superhero genre; Superman and Batman from DC Comics and films based on the Marvel Comics brand such as Spider-Man, X-Men and films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have all done particularly well. The only films in the top ten that do not form a franchise are the top two, Avatar and Titanic, both directed by James Cameron, and Disney's Frozen. Animated family films have performed consistently well, with Disney films enjoying lucrative re-releases prior to the home video era. Disney also enjoyed later success with its Pixar brand, of which the Toy Story films and Finding Nemo have been the best performers; beyond Pixar animation, the Shrek, Ice Age, Madagascar and Despicable Me series have met with the most success.

While inflation has eroded away the achievements of most films from the 1960s and 1970s, there are franchises originating from that period that are still active: James Bond and Star Trek films are still being released periodically, and the Star Wars saga was reprised after a lengthy hiatus; Indiana Jones also saw a successful comeback after lying dormant for nearly twenty years. All four are still among the highest-grossing franchises, despite starting over thirty years ago. Some of the older films that held the record of highest-grossing film still have respectable grosses even by today's standards, but do not really compete against today's top-earners: Gone with the Wind for instance -- which was the highest-grossing film for twenty-five years -- does not even make the top fifty in the modern market, but, adjusted for inflation, it would still be the highest-grossing film. All grosses on the list are expressed in US dollars at their nominal value, except where stated otherwise.

Avatar and Titanic, 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 to be 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's earnings. Once revenue from home entertainment is factored in it is not immediately clear which film is the most successful. Titanic earned $1.2 billion from video and DVD sales and rentals, in addition to the $2.2 billion it grossed in theaters. While complete sales data is not available for Avatar, it earned $345 million from the sale of sixteen million DVD and Blu-ray units in North America, and ultimately sold a total of thirty million DVD and Blu-ray units worldwide. After home video income is accounted for, both films have earned over $3 billion. Television broadcast rights will also substantially 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 a further $55 million from the NBC and HBO broadcast rights, equating to about 9% of its North American gross.

When a film is highly exploitable as a commercial property, its ancillary 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 - but generated global merchandise sales of over $8 billion in the five years after its 2006 release, the most revenue ever generated by a franchise consisting of a single film.

Only the revenues from theatrical exhibition at their nominal value are included here, which sees Avatar rank in the top position. Eighteen films in total have grossed in excess of $1 billion worldwide. The films on this chart have all had a theatrical run (including re-releases) since 1996, and films that have not played since then do not appear on the chart due to ticket-price inflation, population size and ticket purchasing trends not being considered.

...

Due to the long-term effects of inflation, notably the significant increase of movie theater ticket prices, the list unadjusted for inflation gives far more weight to later films. The unadjusted list, while commonly found in the press, is therefore largely meaningless for comparing films widely separated in time, as many films from earlier eras will never appear on a modern unadjusted list, despite achieving higher commercial success when adjusted for price increases.

To compensate for the devaluation of the currency, some charts make adjustments for inflation, but not even this practice fully addresses the issue since ticket prices and inflation do not necessarily parallel one another. For example, in 1970 tickets cost $1.55 or about $6.68 in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars; by 1980, prices had risen to about $2.69, a drop to $5.50 in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars.

Ticket prices have also risen at different rates of inflation around the world, further complicating the process of adjusting worldwide grosses.

Another complication is release in multiple formats for which different ticket prices are charged. One notable example of this phenomenon is Avatar, which was also released in 3D and IMAX: almost two-thirds of tickets for that film were for 3D showings with an average price of $10, and about one-sixth were for IMAX showings with an average price over $14.50, compared to a 2010 average price of $7.61 for 2D films. Social and economic factors such as population change and the growth of international markets also impact on the number of people purchasing theater tickets, along with audience demographics where some films sell a much higher proportion of discounted children's tickets, or perform better in big cities where tickets cost more.

The measuring system for gauging a film's success is based on unadjusted grosses, mainly because historically this is the way it has always been done due to the practices of the film industry: the box office receipts are compiled by theaters and relayed to the distributor, which in turn releases them to the media.

Converting to a more representative system that counts ticket sales rather than gross is also fraught with problems due to the fact that the only data available for older films are the sale totals.

As the motion picture industry is highly oriented towards marketing currently released films, unadjusted figures are always used in marketing campaigns so that new blockbuster films can much more easily achieve a high sales ranking, and thus be promoted as a "top film of all time", so there is little incentive to switch to a more robust analysis from a marketing or even newsworthy point of view.

Despite the inherent difficulties in accounting for inflation, several attempts have been made.
Estimates depend on the price index used to adjust the grosses, and the exchange rates used to convert between currencies can also impact upon the calculations, both of which can have an effect on the ultimate rankings of an inflation adjusted list. Gone with the Wind -- first released in 1939 -- is generally considered to be the most successful film, with Guinness World Records in 2011 estimating its adjusted global gross at $3.3 billion. ....

Box-office figures are reported in the form of gross or distributor rentals, the latter being especially true of older films. Commonly mistaken for home video revenue, the rentals are the distributor's share of the film's theatrical revenue i.e. the box office gross less the exhibitor's cut.

In the modern marketplace, rental fees can vary greatly -- depending on a number of factors -- although the films from the major studios average out at 43%.

Audience tastes were fairly eclectic during the 20th century, but several trends did emerge.
During the silent era, films with war themes were popular with audiences, with The Birth of a Nation (American Civil War), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Big Parade and Wings (all World War I) becoming the most successful films in their respective years of release, with the trend coming to an end with All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930.

With the advent of sound in 1927, the musical -- the genre best placed to showcase the new technology -- took over as the most popular type of film with audiences, with 1928 and 1929 both being topped by musical films. The genre continued to perform strongly in the 1930s, but the outbreak of World War II saw war themed films dominate again during this period, starting with Gone with the Wind (American Civil War) in 1939, and finishing with The Best Years of Our Lives (World War II) in 1946.

Samson and Delilah (1949) saw the beginning of a trend of increasingly expensive historical dramas set during Ancient Rome/biblical times throughout the 1950s as cinema competed with television for audiences, with Quo Vadis, The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and Spartacus all becoming the highest-grossing film of the year during initial release, before the genre started to wane after several high-profile failures.

The success of White Christmas and South Pacific in the 1950s foreshadowed the comeback of the musical in the 1960s with West Side Story, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Funny Girl all among the top films of the decade.

The 1970s saw a shift in audience tastes to high concept films, with six such films made by either George Lucas or Steven Spielberg topping the chart during the 1980s.

The 21st century has seen an increasing dependence on franchises and adaptations, with Avatar in 2009 being the only chart-topper forming an original work.

Films directed by Steven Spielberg have been the highest-grossing film of the year on six occasions.

...

The following directors have also all directed two films on the chart:

 Frank Lloyd, 
 King Vidor, 
 Frank Capra, 
 Michael Curtiz, 
 Leo McCarey, 
 Alfred Hitchcock, 
 David Lean, 
 Stanley Kubrick, 
 Guy Hamilton, 
 Mike Nichols, 
 William Friedkin, 
 Peter Jackson and 
 Gore Verbinski; 
 Mervyn LeRoy, 
 Ken Annakin and 
 Robert Wise are each represented by one solo credit and one shared credit,  
 and John Ford co-directed two films. 
 
 Disney films are usually co-directed and some directors have served on several winning teams: 
 Wilfred Jackson, 
 Hamilton Luske, 
 Clyde Geronimi, 
 David Hand, 
 Ben Sharpsteen, 
 Wolfgang Reitherman and 
 Bill Roberts
 have all co-directed at least two films on the list. ...

Due to release schedules -- especially in the case of films released towards the end of the year -- and different release patterns across the world, many films can do business in two or more calendar years; therefore the grosses documented here are not confined to just the year of release. Grosses are not limited to original theatrical runs either, with many older films often being re-released periodically so the figures represent all the business a film has done since its original release; a film's first-run gross is included in brackets after the total if known.

In the cases where estimates conflict both films are recorded, and in cases where a film has moved into first place due to being re-released the previous record-holder is also retained. Due to incomplete data it cannot be known for sure how much money some films have made and when they made it, but generally the chart chronicles the films from each year that went on to earn the most. At least one film every year has generated $100 million in gross revenue at the box office since 1967, and from 2008 each year has succeeded in producing a billion dollar grossing film.

• Snow White's $416 million global cume omits earnings outside of North America from the 1987 and 1993 re-releases. Up to and including the 1983 re-release, Snow White had grossed $330 million, with $98 million coming from the North American market. As a guide to its potential earnings from those releases, this equates to Snow White generally doubling its American earnings in foreign territories, with the 1987 reissue earning about $45 million in North America, and the 1993 reissue $41 million.

• Mom and Dad does not generally feature in 'high-gross' lists such as those published by Variety due to its independent distribution. Essentially belonging to the exploitation genre, it was marketed as an educational sex hygiene film in an effort to circumvent censorship laws. Falling foul of the Motion Picture Production Code, Mom and Dad was prevented from obtaining mainstream distribution and restricted to independent and drive-in theaters. It was the biggest hit of its kind, and remained in continual distribution until the 1970s when hardcore pornography eventually took over. At the end of 1947 it had earned $2 million, and by 1949, $8 million; by 1956 it had earned $22 million in rentals, representing a gross of $80 million, and would have easily placed in the top ten films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Estimates of its total earnings are as high as $100 million.

The Birth of a Nation pioneered many of the techniques used in film-making today, becoming the most successful film ever made at the time of its release. ...

Although received wisdom holds that it is unlikely The Birth of a Nation was ever overtaken by a silent-era film, the record would fall to 1925's Ben-Hur ($9,386,000) if The Birth of a Nation earned significantly less than its estimated gross. In addition to its gross rental earnings through public exhibition, The Birth of a Nation played at a large number of private, club and organizational engagements which figures are unavailable for. It was hugely popular with the Ku Klux Klan who used it to drive recruitment, and at one point Variety estimated its total earnings to stand at around $50 million. Despite later retracting the claim, the sum has been widely reported even though it has never been substantiated.

The 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat reportedly earned as much as $600 million, a figure that may have been inflated by gangsters in money laundering schemes. ..

Another film purported to have been the highest-grosser is the 1972 pornographic film, Deep Throat. In 1984, Linda Lovelace testified to a United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on juvenile justice that the film had earned $600 million; this figure has been the subject of much speculation, since if it is accurate then the film would have made more money than Star Wars, and finished the 1970s as the highest-grossing film. The main argument against this figure is that it simply did not have a wide enough release to sustain the sort of sums that would be required for it to ultimately gross this amount. Exact figures are not known, but testimony in a federal trial in 1976 -- about four years into the film's release -- showed the film had grossed over $25 million. Roger Ebert has reasoned it possibly did earn as much as $600 million on paper, since mobsters owned most of the adult movie theaters during this period and would launder income from drugs and prostitution through them, so probably inflated the box office receipts for the film.

The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, E.T. and Avatar all increased their record grosses with re-releases. The grosses from their original theatrical runs are included here along with totals from re-releases up to the point that they lost the record; therefore the total for The Birth of a Nation includes income from its reissues up to 1940; the total for Star Wars includes revenue from the late 1970s and early 1980s reissues but not from the 1997 Special Edition; the total for E.T. incorporates its gross from the 1985 reissue but not from 2002; the total for Avatar -- as the current record-holder -- includes all its earnings at the present time.

Gone with the Wind is represented twice on the chart: the 1940 entry includes earnings from its staggered 1939 - 1942 release (roadshows/first-run engagements/general release along with all of its revenue up to the 1961 reissue prior to losing the record to The Sound of Music in 1966; its 1971 entry -- after it took back the record -- includes income from the 1967 and 1971 reissues but omitting later releases. The Godfather was re-released in 1973 after its success at the 45th Academy Awards, and Jaws was released again in 1976, and their grosses here most likely include earnings from those releases. The Sound of Music, The Godfather, Jaws, Jurassic Park and Titanic increased their earnings with further releases in 1973, 1997, 1979, 2013 and 2012 respectively, but they are not included in the totals here since they had already conceded the record prior to being re-released.

The James Bond series was the first to gross over a billion dollars, and is still the highest-grossing after adjusting for inflation.

Prior to 2000, only seven series had grossed over $1 billion at the box office:
James Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Rocky, Batman, Jurassic Park and Star Trek. Since the turn of the century that number has increased to over thirty; this is partly due to inflation and market growth, but also to Hollywood's adoption of the franchise model: films that have built-in brand recognition, such as being based on a well known literary source (The Lord of the Rings) or an established character (Indiana Jones). The methodology is based on the concept that films associated with things audiences are already familiar with can be more effectively marketed to them, and as such are known as "pre-sold" films within the industry.

The Harry Potter series has grossed the most, amassing nearly $8 billion over eight films at the box office, although the Eon James Bond series is the highest grossing when adjusted for inflation, with a total of over $13 billion at 2011/12 prices. Harry Potter has also generated at least $3.5 billion in home video revenue, taking total consumer spending on the films to over $11 billion.

If ancillary income from merchandising is included, then Star Wars is the most lucrative franchise, earning more than $22 billion in total, with direct income from the films themselves accounting for just one third of overall revenues. In nominal terms, Harry Potter is also the most consistent franchise, averaging at around $965 million with each film earning in excess of $790 million, while the most consistent series is Peter Jackson's Middle-earth adaptation, with the first four films averaging at about $980 million and each film earning over $870 million; adjusted for inflation they have performed similarly to Star Wars, averaging over $1 billion per film.

• LINK: Cones, John W. (1997).
  The feature film distribution deal: a critical analysis of the single most important film industry agreement.
  Southern Illinois University Press.
  "Distributor rentals: It is also important to know and recognize the difference between the distributor's gross receipts and the gross rentals. The term "rentals" refers to the aggregate amount of the film distributor's share of monies paid at theatre box offices computed on the basis of negotiated agreements between the distributor and the exhibitor. Note that gross receipts refers to amounts actually received and from all markets and media, whereas gross rentals refers to amounts earned from theatrical exhibition only, regardless of whether received by the distributor.

  Thus, gross receipts is the much broader term and includes distributor rentals.
  The issue of film rentals (i.e., what percentage of a film's box office gross comes back to the distributor) is of key importance... More current numbers suggest that distributor rentals for the major studio/distributor released films average in the neighborhood of 43% of box office gross. Again, however, such an average is based on widely divergent distributor rental ratios on individual films."
  
  

• LINK: Balio, Tino (1987).
  United Artists: the Company that Changed the Film Industry.
  University of Wisconsin Press.
  "To rekindle interest in the movies, Hollywood not only had to compete with television but also with other leisure-time activities ... Movies made a comeback by 1955, but audiences had changed. Moviegoing became a special event for most people, creating the phenomenon of the big picture."
  
  

• LINK: Hall & Neale 2010,
  "Later epics proved far more disastrous for the backers.
  Samuel Bronston's The Fall of the Roman Empire, filmed in Spain, cost $17,816,876 and grossed only $1.9 million in America. George Stevens's long-gestating life of Christ, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), which had been in planning since 1954 and in production since 1962, earned domestic rentals of $6,962,715 on a $21,481,745 negative cost, the largest amount yet spent on a production made entirely within the United States. The Bible -- in the Beginning... (1966) was financed by the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis from private investors and Swiss banks. He then sold distribution rights outside Italy jointly to Fox and Seven Arts for $15 million (70 percent of which came from Fox), thereby recouping the bulk of his $18 million investment. Although The Bible returned a respectable world rental of $25.3 million, Fox was still left with a net loss of just over $1.5 million. It was the last biblical epic to be released by any major Hollywood studio for nearly twenty years."
  
  

• Parkinson, David (2007).
  The Rough Guide to Film Musicals.
  Dorling Kindersley.
  "But they had previously succeeded in showing how musicals could centre on ordinary people with Sunny Side Up (1929), which had grossed $2 million at the box office and demonstrated a new maturity and ingenuity in the staging of story and dance."
  
  

• LINK: Hall & Neale 2010,
  "For similar reasons of accountability, Variety has typically used figures for domestic (U.S. and Canadian) rather than worldwide revenue. This became its standard policy in 1940, when the advent of war in Europe persuaded the American film industry (temporarily, as it turned out) that it should be wholly reliant on the home market for profitability. Where specific rentals data are reported in Variety before this (which tended to be only sporadically) they were often for worldwide rather domestic performance. This was also the case with other trade sources, such as Quigley's annual Motion Picture Almanac, which published its own all-time hits lists from the early 1930s onward. The subsequent confusion of domestic and worldwide figures, and of rental and box-office figures, has plagued many published accounts of Hollywood history (sometimes including those in Variety itself), and we have attempted to be diligent in clarifying the differences between them."
  
  

• LINK: Wasko, Janet (1986).
  " D.W. Griffiths and the banks: a case study in film financing".
  In Kerr, Paul. The Hollywood Film Industry: A Reader.
  "Various accounts have cited $15 to $18 million profits during the first few years of release, while in a letter to a potential investor in the proposed sound version, Aitken noted that a $15 to $18 million box-office gross was a 'conservative estimate'. For years Variety has listed The Birth of a Nation's total rental at $50 million. (This reflects the total amount paid to the distributor, not box-office gross.) This 'trade legend' has finally been acknowledged by Variety as a 'whopper myth', and the amount has been revised to $5 million. That figure seems far more feasible, as reports of earnings in the Griffith collection list gross receipts for 1915 - 1919 at slightly more than $5.2 million (including foreign distribution) and total earnings after deducting general office expenses, but not royalties, at about $2 million."
  
  

• LINK: Finler 2003,
  "Walt Disney took a big risk when he decided to invest $1.5 million in his first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It became the biggest hit of the sound era and the largest-grossing movie since The Birth of a Nation - until the release of independent producer David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind just two years later."
  
  

• LINK: Barrios, Richard (1995).
  A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film.
  "Since it's rarely seen today, The Singing Fool is frequently confused with The Jazz Singer; although besides Jolson and a pervasively maudlin air the two have little in common. In the earlier film Jolson was inordinately attached to his mother and sang "Mammy"; here the fixation was on his young son, and "Sonny Boy" became an enormous hit. So did the film, which amassed a stunning world-wide gross of $5.9 million ... "
  
  

• LINK: Klopsch, Louis; Sandison, George Henry; Talmage, Thomas De Witt (1965).
  Christian Herald
  "Yet "The Ten Commandments" has earned 58 million dollars in film rentals and is expected to bring in 10 to 15 million each year it is reissued."
  
  

• LINK: Cook, David A. (2002).
  Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979.
  Volume 9 of History of the American Cinema, Charles Harpole.
  "The industry was stunned when Star Wars earned nearly $3 million in its first week and by the end of August had grossed $100 million; it played continuously throughout 1977-1978, and was officially re-released in 1978 and 1979, by the end of which it had earned $262 million in rentals worldwide to become the top- grossing film of all time - a position it would maintain until surpassed by Universal's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in January 1983."
  
  

  Box-office sources
  
  

• LINK: 2009 IMAX re-release: "The Dark Knight Re-Release IMAX Locations".
  CraveOnline. January 22, 2009
  "IMAX Corporation and Warner Bros. Pictures today announced that the box office smash hit The Dark Knight, which has grossed more than $997 million at the worldwide box office since its release on July 18th, 2008, will return to IMAX theatres for an encore presentation. Starting January 23rd, the film will open in 143 IMAX screens domestically, and 29 screens internationally."
  
  

• LINK: Hall & Neale 2010,
  "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was to become Metro's most expensive production and one of the decade's biggest box-office hits. Its production costs have been estimated at "something between $600,000 and $800,000." Variety estimated its worldwide gross at $4 million in 1925 and at $5 million in 1944; in 1991, it estimated its cumulative domestic rentals at $3,800,000."
  
  

• LINK: "MGM's silent Ben-Hur, which opened at the end of 1925, had out-grossed all the other pictures released by the company in 1926 combined. With worldwide rentals of $9,386,000 on first release it was, with the sole possible exception of The Birth of a Nation, the highest-earning film of the entire silent era. (At a negative cost of $3,967,000, it was also the most expensive.)"
  
  

• LINK: "The Planet of the Apes motion pictures were all moneymakers and Zanuck's record would have immediately improved had he stayed through the release of The French Connection, which took in rentals of approximately $75 million worldwide."
  
  

• LINK: Vance, Jeffrey (2003).
  Chaplin: genius of the cinema.
  "Chaplin's negative cost for City Lights was $1,607,351.
  The film eventually earned him a worldwide profit of $5 million ($2 million domestically and $3 million in foreign distribution), an enormous sum of money for the time."
  
  

• LINK: "The studio released its most profitable pictures of the decade in 1933,
  She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, written by and starring Mae West.
  Produced at a rock-bottom cost of $200,000 each, they undoubtedly helped Paramount through the worst patch in its history..."
  
  

• LINK: Block, Alex Ben (2010),
  She Done Him Wrong,
  "The worldwide rentals of over $3 million keep the lights on at Paramount, which did not shy away from selling the movie's sex appeal."
  
  

• LINK: Phillips, Kendall R. (2008).
  Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America.
  ABC-CLIO.
  "The reaction to West's first major film, however, was not exclusively negative. Made for a mere $200,000, the film would rake in a healthy $2 million in the United States and an additional million in overseas markets."
  
  

• LINK: Schaefer, Eric (1999).
  "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959.
  Duke University Press.
  "Leading the pack of postwar sex hygiene films was Mom and Dad (1944), which would become not only the most successful sex hygiene film in history but the biggest pre-1960 exploitation film of any kind. At the end of 1947, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mom and Dad had grossed $2 million. By 1949 Time had estimated that Mom and Dad had taken in $8 million from twenty million moviegoers. And publicity issuing from Mom and Dad's production company indicated that by the end of 1956 it had grossed over $80 million worldwide. Net rentals of around $22 million by 1956 would easily place it in the top ten films of the late 1940s and early 1950s had it appeared on conventional lists. Some estimates have placed its total gross over the years at up to $100 million, and it was still playing drive-in dates into 1975... The film was made for around $65,000 with a crew of Hollywood veterans including director William "One Shot" Beaudine, cinematographer Marcel LePicard, and a cast that sported old stalwarts Hardie Albright, Francis Ford, and John Hamilton." ...
  
  

• Samson and Delilah: "...the film became the highest grosser in the studio's history to date, with domestic rentals of $7,976,730 by 1955 and a further $6,232,520 overseas... For all their spectacle, Samson and David were quite economically produced, costing $3,097,563 and $2,170,000 respectively."
  
  

• Quo Vadis: "Production costs totaled a record $7,623,000 ... Worldwide rentals totaled $21,037,000, almost half of which came from the foreign market."
  
  

• The Ten Commandments: "No film did more to entrench roadshow policy than The Ten Commandments.
  While the success of This Is Cinerama, The Robe, and even Eighty Days could be attributed, at least in part, to their respective photographic and projection formats, that of DeMille's film (which cost a record $13,266,491) could not ... General release began at normal prices in 1959 and continued until the end of the following year, when the film was temporarily withdrawn (the first of several reissues came in 1966). The worldwide rental by this time was around $60 million. In the domestic market it dislodged Gone with the Wind from the number one position on Variety's list of All-Time Rentals Champs. GWTW had hitherto maintained its lead through several reissues (and was soon to regain it through another in 1961)."
  
  

• Columbia's Anglo-American war film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) opened on a roadshow basis in selected U.S. cities (including New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles) and in London. Costing only $2,840,000 to produce, it grossed $30.6 million worldwide on first release."
  
  

• "South Pacific also became for a time the most successful film ever released in the United Kingdom, where it earned a box-office gross three times its negative cost of $5,610,000. Anticipated global rentals after three years were $30 million."
  
  

• "In the case of Spartacus, overseas earnings to 1969 amounted to $12,462,044, while U.S. and Canadian rentals (even including a million-dollar TV sale) were only $10,643,181. But the film failed to show a profit on production costs of $10,284,014 because of the distribution charges and expenses amounting to an additional $15,308,083."
  
  

• "The Bible -- In the Beginning... (1966)
  was financed by the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis from private investors and Swiss banks. He then sold distribution rights outside Italy jointly to Fox and Seven Arts for $15 million (70 percent of which came from Fox), thereby recouping the bulk of his $18 million investment. Although The Bible returned a respectable world rental of $25.3 million, Fox was still left with a net loss of just over $1.5 million. It was the last biblical epic to be released by any major Hollywood studio for nearly twenty years."
  
  

• Lawrence of Arabia: Columbia released the $13.8 million Lawrence of Arabia (1962), filmed in Super Panavision 70, exclusively on a hard-ticket basis, but opened Barabbas (1962), The Cardinal (1963), and the $12 million Joseph Conrad adaptation Lord Jim (1965) as 70mm roadshows in selected territories only."
  
  

• The Longest Day:
  "Darryl's most ambitious independent production was The Longest Day (1962), a three-hour reconstruction of D-Day filmed in black-and-white CinemaScope at a cost of $8 million. It grossed over $30 million worldwide as a roadshow followed by general release, thereby helping the studio regain stability during its period of reorganization."
  
  

• Cleopatra:
  "With top tickets set at an all-time high of $5.50, Cleopatra had amassed as much as $20 million in such guarantees from exhibitors even before its premiere. Fox claimed the film had cost in total $44 million, of which $31,115,000 represented the direct negative cost and the rest distribution, print and advertising expenses. (These figures excluded the more than $5 million spent on the production's abortive British shoot in 1960 - 61, prior to its relocation to Italy.) By 1966 worldwide rentals had reached $38,042,000 including $23.5 million from the United States."
  
  

  My Fair Lady:
  "My Fair Lady (1964) cost Warners $17 million to make, including a record $5.5 million just for the film rights to the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage show and a million-dollar fee for star Audrey Hepburn. By 1967 it was reported to have grossed $55 million from roadshowing worldwide."
  
  

• Mary Poppins:
  "Mary Poppins (1964), which cost $5.2 million, was neither a stage adaptation nor a roadshow. But by the end of its first release, it had grossed nearly $50 million worldwide."
  
  

• The Graduate:
  "The Graduate eventually earned U.S. rentals of $44,090,729 on a production cost of $3.1 million to become the most lucrative non-roadshow picture (and independent release) to date."
  
  

• "Fiddler had the highest domestic box office of 1971 (it was second in worldwide box office after Diamonds Are Forever), with more than $100 million in unadjusted worldwide box office on its initial release. The soundtrack album was also a huge seller. The 1979 re-release was not as successful, with the $3.8 million print and ad costs almost as high as the $4.3 million in worldwide rentals."
  
  

• "Since The Godfather had earned over $85 million in U.S.-Canada rentals (the worldwide box-office gross was $285 million), a sequel, according to the usual formula, could be expected to earn approximately two-thirds of the original's box-office take (ultimately Godfather II had rentals of $30 million)."

  "The Godfather catapulted Coppola to overnight celebrity, earning three Academy Awards and a then record-breaking $142 million in worldwide sales."
  
  

• "Rocky was the "sleeper of the decade".
  Produced by UA and costing just under $1 million, it went on to earn a box-office gross of $117,235,247 in the United States and $225 million worldwide." ... "The budget was $1,075,000 plus producer's fees of $100,000."
  
  

• "Star Wars" has brought 20th Century-Fox approximately $250 million in film rentals ... "Star Wars" grossed $410 million, and his share was enough to allow him to finance its sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back," himself." ...