Top 10 Best Movie Franchises in the World (2026)

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There’s a fun bar trivia question hiding in the box office numbers: which movie franchises have crossed $10 billion worldwide? By the most commonly used industry tracking, Box Office Mojo and The Numbers, as compiled by Business Insider, only two have: Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Worth flagging upfront: that answer depends entirely on how you define a “franchise.” Grouped differently, some trackers would slice the MCU into smaller pieces or merge others together. We’re using the grouping most major outlets use, and we’ll explain exactly how below.

With that framing in place, here’s the part that actually surprises people about the best movie franchises of all time: the MCU isn’t just ahead of Star Wars. It’s more than three times ahead.

A Quick Word on Methodology (Because Franchises Overlap)

Before the list, one honest caveat. Modern franchises overlap in messy ways. Deadpool & Wolverine is simultaneously a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and a continuation of the X-Men series that started at 20th Century Fox. Batman, X-Men, and the DC Extended Universe all share characters, actors, and sometimes even timelines across different “franchises” as commonly tracked.

For this list, we’re following the same grouping convention Box Office Mojo and The Numbers use, which Business Insider compiled into a single comparison: the MCU includes Marvel Studios’ interconnected slate (Avengers, Guardians, Deadpool & Wolverine, etc.); X-Men is tracked as the original Fox-era mutant series plus its Deadpool spin-off line; DC Extended Universe and Batman are tracked separately even though Batman appeared within some DCEU films. That means a film like Deadpool & Wolverine technically counts toward MCU totals in some trackers and X-Men totals in others — we’ve noted this explicitly wherever it affects a number below, rather than pretending the categories are perfectly clean.

The Numbers, As Currently Tracked

Here’s where things stood among the highest-grossing film franchises based on the most recent compiled totals from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers, via Business Insider’s 2026 franchise comparison:

Marvel Cinematic Universe — $31.98 billion (36 films)
Star Wars — $10.42 billion (12 films)
Spider-Man — $9 billion (10 films, as of the most recent full compilation — this predates Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s 2026 release and will rise once that total is folded in)
James Bond — $7.88 billion (27 films)
The Fast and the Furious — $7.32 billion (11 films)
DC Extended Universe — $7.21 billion (16 films)
The Wizarding World (Harry Potter) — $7.11 billion (12 films)
Jurassic Park/World — $6.39 billion (7 films)
X-Men — $6.08 billion (13 films, using the tracker’s convention of crediting Deadpool 2 rather than Deadpool & Wolverine to this total — see note below)
Batman — $5.72 billion (11 films)

Sit with that first line for a second. Marvel’s total is bigger than franchises #2 and #3 combined. That’s not “winning.” That’s a different category entirely.

Marvel Isn’t Just Big — It’s Efficient in a Weird Way

Here’s what people miss about the biggest movie franchises: Marvel’s lead isn’t just about having more movies. Star Wars has been running since 1977. James Bond has been running since 1962. The Marvel Cinematic Universe specifically — not “Marvel movies” broadly, which existed in various forms for decades before — began in 2008 with Iron Man. In less time than Star Wars has existed, the MCU tripled Star Wars’ total earnings.

The single biggest hit in Marvel history says it all: Avengers: Endgame pulled in $2.8 billion in 2019, which remains the second-highest-grossing film of all time. That wasn’t a fluke — it was the payoff of eleven years and 22 movies of connective tissue, character arcs, and post-credits scenes that trained an entire generation of moviegoers to stay in their seats and show up for the next chapter.

And it’s not slowing down. Avengers: Doomsday lands December 18, 2026, and prediction markets tracked by industry analysts have put its odds of being 2026’s top-grossing film at roughly 17% — behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s 38% and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s 31%, according to prediction-market data compiled by Accio’s 2026 box office trend report. Even at third-favorite, that’s a genuinely strong position for a film that hasn’t opened yet.

The Quietly Impressive One: Spider-Man

If you actually care about efficiency rather than raw size among the highest-grossing movie franchises, Spider-Man is the one worth admiring. Nine billion dollars from 10 films — a number that predates this year’s Brand New Day — is a genuinely different achievement than Marvel’s 36-film marathon or Bond’s 27-film endurance run. That’s roughly $900 million per movie on average, a rate that beats basically everything else on this list on a per-film basis.

And that average is about to climb further: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, released July 31, 2026, delivered a confirmed $360 million domestic opening weekend — breaking Avengers: Endgame’s previous all-time domestic record — and a global opening reported between $927 million and $932 million depending on the source, the second-biggest worldwide opening ever behind only Endgame. It crossed $1 billion worldwide in roughly six days. Once its final total is folded into the franchise’s all-time figure, Spider-Man’s per-film average will climb even higher.

The One Everyone Forgets Is Still Here: James Bond

James Bond doesn’t get talked about in the same breath as Marvel or Star Wars anymore, and that’s honestly a little unfair. This is a franchise that started when John F. Kennedy was still president. It’s outlived six different actors in the lead role, multiple complete tonal reinventions, and roughly a hundred think-pieces declaring it “dated.” And it’s still sitting at $7.88 billion — ahead of Fast & Furious, ahead of the entire DC Extended Universe, ahead of Harry Potter.

Skyfall alone made $1.11 billion in 2012, proving that a nearly 50-year-old spy franchise could still out-earn most brand-new blockbusters when it got the formula right. Bond isn’t the biggest name in the conversation anymore, but longevity like that deserves real respect.

Jurassic Park: Genuine Momentum, Realistic Expectations

Jurassic Park/World sits at #8 with $6.39 billion — smaller than Harry Potter, smaller than X-Men on paper. But look at the film count: just 7 movies, the fewest of any franchise in the top 10. Nobody else is generating that kind of total with that few entries.

Jurassic World Rebirth’s 2025 release added real momentum, opening to $318 million globally over its first five days and going on to earn a reported $865–870 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo tracking. That’s a genuinely strong result — but it’s worth being precise about what it does and doesn’t do to the ranking: even with Rebirth’s full total factored in, Jurassic Park/World remains meaningfully behind Harry Potter’s $7.11 billion and well behind Spider-Man’s $9 billion. What Rebirth’s performance does show is that the franchise still has real commercial life left in it, and that its per-film efficiency continues to be genuinely competitive with much larger franchises — not that it’s about to leapfrog either of them anytime soon.

The Ones That Show Franchise Size Isn’t Everything

DC’s story is the most human one on this list. Sixteen movies, $7.21 billion, and a reputation for being genuinely inconsistent — some entries beloved, some entries publicly mocked. Aquaman, of all things, is the franchise’s biggest hit at $1.15 billion, which tells you audiences will show up for the right character even when the surrounding universe is going through it.

X-Men’s story needs a specific correction here. As tracked by Box Office Mojo’s X-Men franchise grouping, Deadpool 2 (2018) is credited as the series’ top earner at $786 million — but that’s not the biggest Deadpool film, and it’s worth being upfront about why. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) earned roughly $1.34 billion worldwide, making it both the highest-grossing R-rated film in history and comfortably the biggest “Deadpool” movie by a wide margin. The catch: Deadpool & Wolverine is officially a Marvel Studios/MCU production, its ticket sales already counted in the MCU’s $31.98 billion total above — so depending on which tracker’s convention you follow, it either boosts X-Men’s total considerably or it doesn’t count there at all. We’ve followed Box Office Mojo’s standard convention (crediting it to the MCU, not X-Men) for consistency with the rest of this list, but it’s exactly the kind of overlap that makes franchise rankings genuinely harder to pin down than they first appear.

What 2026 Is Actually Telling Us

This year has been a genuine stress test for the whole idea of “franchise dominance.” Several major names on this list released something significant: Spider-Man: Brand New Day broke real box office records this summer, as detailed above. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu reached theaters on May 22, 2026 — but it’s worth being accurate about how that actually went: it opened to a four-day total of $163–167 million globally, described by Variety as the softest Star Wars opening since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. It has since climbed to roughly $299 million worldwide as of mid-June reporting, a respectable if unspectacular result rather than a triumphant franchise revival.

Prediction markets tracked ahead of 2026’s biggest releases specifically favored Spider-Man: Brand New Day (38% odds of being the year’s top-grossing film), The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (31%), and Avengers: Doomsday (17%), according to Accio’s 2026 box office trend analysis — a useful, sourced data point rather than a vague gesture at “the industry expects.” Spider-Man’s actual summer performance suggests that specific prediction aged well.

So What’s the Actual Takeaway?

If you’re just here for a ranking of the top movie franchises by box office, you have it: Marvel, then Star Wars, then Spider-Man, then everyone else fighting over the $6–8 billion range. But the more interesting thing this list shows is that among the most successful movie franchises, “success” isn’t one story, and it isn’t even one clean set of categories — Deadpool & Wolverine alone proves how blurry the lines between “franchises” have become. Marvel wins on scale. Spider-Man wins on efficiency, especially after this year. Bond wins on sheer stubborn longevity. Jurassic Park is showing real per-film strength without actually threatening to leapfrog the franchises above it.

Whichever one you’re personally attached to, the numbers make one thing clear: audiences aren’t tired of franchises. They’re just increasingly picky about which ones deserve their loyalty — and the results in 2026 have been a genuine mixed bag, from Spider-Man’s record-breaking summer to Star Wars’ quietly softer-than-expected spring.

Figures compiled from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers via Business Insider’s 2026 franchise ranking (businessinsider.com/highest-grossing-franchises-in-movie-history), cross-checked against Variety, Deadline, and CNBC box office reporting for 2026-specific releases. Totals for franchises with active 2026 releases still in theaters continue to change; verify current figures against a live tracker before citing a specific number.