The 8 Best (and 8 Worst) Movies of All Time to Make $1 Billion
$1 billion is a lot of money, and $1 billion at the box office means that the movie was able to lure more than 60 million people into theaters (maybe some went for a rewatch, but still)! Then again, not every stellar success is completely justified, according to critics.
8 of these movies completely deserved their bank, but the other 8, as the professionals of the industry believe, didn't.
Currently just a little bit over 50 movies have crossed the $1 billion mark, but their financial success doesn't mean that they were good.
The Lion King remake just didn't have any competition at the moment of its release so parents didn't have any other option in the cinema for their kids. At least we got a nice Beyoncé song out of that.
And as for other billion-makers that weren't loved by critics, the situation was pretty similar: these movies just caught the perfect release time-frame when no one was able to diverge the audience of casual moviegoers from their projects. Most people don't read reviews before they go to watch a movie: they just pick what's available. For some of these, the name of the big franchise helped, but that's it.
Here's the list of all the movies mentioned here: Toy Story 3 (2010), Zootopia (2016), Toy Story 4 (2019), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Black Panther (2018), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Dark Knight (2008), The Lion King (2019), Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Jurassic World: Dominion ( 2022), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).