Highest-grossing film franchises and series 2023

As of July 2023, the Marvel Cinematic Universe series was the highest-grossing film franchise with total worldwide box office revenue of 29.55 billion U.S. dollars. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) was Marvel's highest-grossing movie with 2.8 billion dollars in global revenue. The "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" series followed with worldwide box office revenues of about 10.3 billion and 9.58 billion dollars, respectively.

May the profit be with you

The Star Wars series started in the late 1970s and has captured the attention of nerds and moviegoers in general ever since. Released just before the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest film of the saga, "The Rise of Skywalker," recorded a global box office revenue of over one billion dollars. This is almost four times more than the production of the movie had cost. The success of the franchise goes beyond the realm of cinema. The video game Star Wars: Squadrons, for instance, sold over one million digital copies worldwide in the first month of its release in October 2020.

Fantastic box offices: where to find them again?

While Star Wars has a history of peaks and valleys, the Harry Potter franchise seems to be jinxed since the launching of its prequel series, Fantastic Beasts. The box office revenue of "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" (2018) stood below 655 million dollars worldwide. This is the lowest revenue generated by a movie from the Harry Potter universe since the brand debuted on the big screen in 2001. The amount is also nearly 20 percent below the global box office of its predecessor, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (2016).