What are the highest grossing horror movies of all time? More specifically, what are the highest grossing horror franchises of all time? On the list of the Top 20, only FIVE franchises in the history of the genre have crossed the $1 billion mark. Can you guess which ones?
Franchises including The Purge, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination, The Exorcist, Insidious and Halloween are some of the biggest of all time, but even they haven’t yet been able to crack that massive billion dollar milestone. Other franchises including Paranormal Activity and Scream come even closer, but haven’t yet crossed over into the billions.
The only horror franchises to hit $1 billion, you ask?
With 10 films under its belt – and an eleventh on the way soon – the Saw franchise officially shattered the $1 billion milestone with the release of Saw X last year. The return of Jigsaw and Amanda drove the worldwide box office total of Saw X to $111 million, bringing the franchise’s total worldwide box office to $1,128,720,386. That makes it the #5 highest grossing horror franchise of all time, with Saw III holding the record for highest grossing movie in the saga.
In the #4 spot is Andy Muschietti’s two-parter adaptation of Stephen King novel IT, which collectively pulled in $1,173,474,976 at the worldwide box office. Yes, the return of Pennywise hit $1 billion in just two movies, with the first film alone hitting $701 million in theaters.
Not far behind Pennywise and the Losers’ Club is Milla Jovovich and her undead adversaries, with the 10-film Resident Evil franchise scaring up $1,237,686,980 to date. That includes animated movies as well as the live action movies, though the bulk of that box office came courtesy of the six movies that Milla Jovovich led from 2002 through 2017.
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City left Jovovich behind for a brand new adaptation of the original games, but that movie only added $42 million to the $1 billion+ franchise total.
In the #2 spot on the list of highest grossing horror franchises of all time is Alien, which has given birth to 8 movies that have thus far made $1,653,812,293 at the box office. The two Alien vs. Predator movies are part of that list, but the highest grossing movie in the franchise to date is Ridley Scott’s prequel Prometheus, which crossed $400 million back in 2012.
The highest grossing horror franchise of all time? That’d be the James Wan-created The Conjuring Universe, which currently includes a total of eight movies. The universe has raked in $2,402,537,783 to date, making it the only horror franchise in history to cross 2 BILLION DOLLARS in theaters. The Nun is still its biggest winner, making $365 million.
Here’s the full list of the top 20 highest grossing horror franchises of all time:
- 1) The Conjuring Universe
- 2) Alien
- 3) Resident Evil
- 4) IT
- 5) Saw
- 6) Hannibal
- 7) Dracula
- 8) Scream
- 9) Scary Movie
- 10) Paranormal Activity
- 11) Halloween
- 12) Predator
- 13) Insidious
- 14) The Exorcist
- 15) Final Destination
- 16) The Ring
- 17) A Quiet Place
- 18) I Am Legend
- 19) A Nightmare on Elm Street
- 20) The Purge
We also want to mention that Legendary’s Monsterverse passed $1 billion in only four movies and is likely to hit $2 billion this year with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, though it’s not being classified as a traditionally “horror” franchise for this particular article. The same can be said for the billion dollar Twilight, Terminator and Jurassic Park movie franchises.
And finally, it’s important to note that some of the other horror franchises above would likely cross over into $1 billion territory if their decades-old numbers were to be adjusted for inflation, but for the purposes of this article, none of these numbers have been adjusted.
Thanks to Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo for helping us put this article together.
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