The Biggest Movie Franchises at the U.S. Box Office

The James Bond movie franchise was the highest-grossing in the U.S. for decades, but it also didn't have much competition. The legacy series, which turns 60 years old today, is currently only the third highest-grossing film series in the country after being overtaken by the swiftly growing Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite Bond's head start of 45 years, Marvel releases like "Avengers: Endgame", "Black Panther" or "Iron Man" brought in the big bucks quickly between 2008 and 2022 to a cumulative $11.3 billion, overtaking Bond even after adjusting for inflation.

The Bond franchise sat at an inflation-adjusted $6.1 billion of cumulative U.S. earnings as of early October of this year, according to movie website The Numbers. The latest Bond movie - Daniel Craig's final one - was released one year ago. "No Time to Die" grossed close to $161 million stateside. Marvel is at a totally different level of churning out releases: 2021 movies Black Widow, Eternals, Spider-Man "No Way Home" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" made almost $1.4 billion at the U.S. box office to-date, while 2022 releases "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Love and Thunder" from the uber-popular Thor series already brought in an astonishing $755 million.

In addition, another older franchise - Star Wars - has zoomed past the British special agent in the last decade. The success of the sequel trilogy, released between 2015 and 2019, sealed that deal and elevated inflation-adjusted, cumulative U.S. earning of the franchise to $8.1 billion.

Despite the Skywalker Saga originally envisioned by inventor George Lucas having ended after nine releases, Lucasfilm is planning to continue the series, as are the studios behind the Marvel and Bond films, meaning the fight over who is the biggest movie franchise will continue.