Top 10 Grossing Comic Book Movies of All Time
Growing up I was an avid comic book fan. While the “coolness” of superpowers did appeal to the 12 year old me, it wasn’t the only thing. What intrigued me the most were the story origins and the character’s ethos. To me it offered, surprisingly, thought-provoking questions, such as: “Why would a person with nearly ‘God’ like powers choose to save the world rather than rule it?”
I nearly became obsessed with Superman — the unstoppable, impervious alien from another planet who protected Earth with his life (literally). At surface level Superman crash-landed on Earth when his home planet, Krypton, exploded, he was raised as Clark Kent by Pa and Ma Kent in Smallville, and slowly evolved into Earth’s mightiest hero in Metropolis. The dichotomy of Clark Kent and Superman fascinated me — they couldn’t be two more opposite sides of the spectrum. This scene from the film Kill Bill: Volume 2 offers an interesting perspective of Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent.
I always felt comic books made great stories. Growing up comic book films were sparse — mostly driven by the Batman franchise in the late 80s and early to mid 90s. But come the 21st century, I was excited to see the characters being adapted for film far more frequently in the past.
Outside of the movies themselves, I started to gain interest in how popular the movies were becoming. Particular how lucrative they were — these movies weren’t competing in the film industry — they were dominating the film industry. In 2014, 4 of the top 10 movies were adapted from comic books. I started pondering the answers to questions like: “Which comic book character was the most profitable?” or “Were comic book films from the 70s or 80s just as popular?”
I decided to mix my love for comic book movies and data analysis to start answering these questions. The comic book freak meets the data geek.
As I was starting to conduct my analysis, I quickly realized I would have to define some clear criteria. One of the earliest being, “How will I decide which movies to evaluate?” There are several comic book publishers which have adapted their characters for films. Finding all the various movies would prove to be difficult. Ultimately, I decided to analyze live-action movies from the two biggest comic book publishers: Marvel and DC. I used the following data sources to determine the movies that have been produced using their characters: All Marvel Movies and All DC Movies
With the criteria out of the way, I decided to first figure out, which movies grossed the most money during their box office lifespan. Easy, right? Well, not so easy if you want to account for inflation. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to compare 1978’s Superman against 2013’s Man of Steel. Don’t forget — the price of a gallon of gas in 1978 was 65 cents.
In order to adjust for inflation, you first need to source the consumer price index (CPI) data from present day all the way to the year of the first movie we’ll be analyzing (1978). The consumer price index (CPI) measures changes in the price level of a product or service purchased by households. Sourcing the CPI was fairly easy since it’s available from the Bureau Labor of Statistics. After a bit of research, I sorted through how to calculate inflation using my newly found inflation table. Essentially, you take the original value you’re trying to measure and multiply it by the current CPI, then you divide that number by the original CPI. So, if I made $1 in 1978 I would use the following formula to figure out the value of that dollar today:
($1 * 2015 November CPI) / 1978 December 1978
This means: ($1 * 237.838) / 65.2 = $3.65
You can check my math using the CPI Inflation Calculator on Bureau Labor of Statistics website.
Next step, we need to know how much money the Marvel and DC live-action films made while they were in the theaters. We checked Box Office Mojo, which is the go to for domestic and worldwide movies for movies, and grabbed the needed information.
Phew. Alright, we have our list of 60 Marvel and DC live-action films, inflation data and formula, box office numbers, a little Microsoft Excel sorcery.. and voilà! Below are the top ten grossing comic book films when adjusting for inflation (unadjusted box office numbers in parenthesis):
1. Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) — Marvel — $1,573,128,160 ($1,518,600,000)
2. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) — Marvel — $1,411,576,172 ($1,405,035,767)
3. Iron Man 3 (2013) — Marvel — $1,240,906,336 ($1,215,439,994)
4. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) — DC — $1,123,895,857 ($1,084,939,099)
5. The Dark Knight (2008) — DC — $1,109,702,007 ($1,004,558,444)
6. Superman (1978) — DC — $1,095,141,917 ($300,218,018)
7. Spider-Man (2002) — Marvel — $1,086,345,294 ($821,708,551)
8. Spider-Man 3 (2007) — Marvel — $1,021,901,620 ($890,871,626)
9. Spider-Man 2 (2004) — Marvel — $986,815,347 ($783,766,341)
10. Men in Black (1997) — Marvel — $873,392,318 ($589,390,539)
My first thought when looking at these numbers was: “Wow. Those numbers are staggering. But how staggering?” I decided to step back and try to determine how did these movies fare against every movie all time? The problem is that question is somewhat difficult to answer. There doesn’t seem to be an official list of worldwide gross adjusted by inflation for movies. With that said, cobbling through different lists available (like this one), I’d venture that comic book movies make up somewhere between 10–12% of the movies that have grossed 1 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). To think 6 of those movies were made within the last 10 years!
The other thought that immediately struck me is some of the recurring themes.. or characters.. that appeared. Spider-Man appears 3 times, right behind him is Batman that appears twice.. and then the Robert Downey Jr. effect is well represented with Iron Man 3 and the Avenger movies. But who is the most lucrative superhero? We’ll dive into that in another post in the future.
Surprisingly, Superman, one of the most popular superhero’s, original offering from 1978 outperforms some of the latest Superman based films such as 2013’s Man of Steel and 2006 Superman Returns, which grossed (adjusted for inflation) $681,996,180 and $461,401,001 respectively. Perhaps the star-studded Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice will end the 47-year-old reign.
Surprising to some, Men in Black is on this list. Many expect it to be a very high-grossing film given the star power of Will Smith, but most are surprised that this is a Marvel published comic. Men in Black was originally published in 1990 by Aircel Comics. Malibu Comics acquired Aircel in 1991. In 1994 Marvel purchased Malibu Comics and added the Men in Black to their roster.
In summary, the top 10 had some expected films, such as the Avengers and Dark Knight series; however, also contained some surprises with 1978’s Superman and the Men in Black. I’ll be making the full list of movies and their data available in the next few weeks.
Stay tuned for more analysis of the Marvel and DC comic book based films. In our next post, we cover the Worst Grossing Comic Book Movies of All Time. Head on over and check it out.
