The Biggest Box Office Hits Of The Decade

The past decade has been historic at the box office. James Cameron's Avatar set the stage for the record-breaking ten-year span, opening in 2009 but making most of its money in 2010, and becoming the then highest-grossing movie of all time along the way. Despite this, by the decade's end Avatar would be dethroned at both the domestic and worldwide box office. Since then, the decade has featured some of the highest highs and the lowest lows as Hollywood has struggled to reach moviegoers in a fractured entertainment landscape. With streaming services giving viewers more opportunity to watch some of the biggest and best movies from the comfort of home, major Hollywood studios have tried to keep luring moviegoers out to the multiplex by turning any existing property into a franchise. 

Where does that leave the box office? That's obviously a big question, but there's no denying that the last ten years have seen a lot of big-budget franchise pictures dominating the top of the charts, leaving less room for original stories. Shocking literally nobody, Disney dominated the decade. More surprising is that many years found one movie winning domestically, with a completely different film taking the throne worldwide. Which movies were the most commercially successful of all? You may be surprised. Here are the biggest box office hits of the decade.

Harry Potter is big business at the box office. The franchise, consisting of the seven Harry Potter films and the two Fantastic Beast prequels, has made more than $2.7 billion domestically and nearly $9.2 billion worldwide. The high point in the franchise came at the very end of its first run (but before the prequels) with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part II in 2011. Deathly Hallows Part II was pitched as the epic conclusion to the eight-film saga that had begun ten years before with Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone. Sorcerer's Stone was the highest-grossing movie of 2001, with $317 million domestically and nearly $1 billion worldwide. 

Surprisingly, the Harry Potter series wouldn't hit numbers like that again until the final installment, Deathly Hallows Part II. Anticipation was at a fever pitch, so much so that Deathly Hallows Part II set a then-opening weekend record of $169 million, on its way to a total domestic gross of $381 million and a worldwide gross of $1.3 billion, making it the highest-grossing movie of 2011. It was a good year to be the boy wizard, but his reign would be short lived, as the magical world of Harry Potter could not beat the might of Marvel.

Disney dominated the decade, but in 2013 the biggest hit at the domestic box office came from a much smaller film studio: Lionsgate. Lionsgate had scored a major coup when it got the rights to Suzanne Collins' wildly popular novel series The Hunger Games. The first film launched the franchise in a big way, earning $152 million in its opening weekend, on its way to $408 million domestic and $694 million worldwide. The sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, opened with $158 million, and earned $424 million domestically and $865 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2013... but only domestically. 

Globally, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire made the top five, but the big winner worldwide was the surprise Disney animated smash hit, Frozen. Frozen opened in limited release in late 2013 with $243,000 and legged its way to $400 million domestic and an incredible $1.27 billion worldwide. While nobody should ever count out Disney at the box office, Frozen becoming 2013's biggest hit worldwide was surprising, given it wasn't a sequel, reboot, or remake, and wasn't based on a popular pre-existing property (Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen ain't The Hunger Games). The year 2013 proved that the global box office was more important than ever, as the biggest domestic hit was not the biggest hit worldwide — a trend that would happen again in the years ahead.

Disney purchased LucasFilm in 2012 for $4 billion, and it wasn't so they could re-release the Star Wars Holiday Special on Blu-ray. The Mouse House was on a mission to bring back the beloved franchise from a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: Episode VII was one of the most anticipated films of the century. Fans had literally waited decades to see what happened to Han, Luke, Leia, and the gang after the Empire had fallen in 1983's Return of the Jedi. This would be the first Star Wars film in 10 years, the first that wasn't a prequel in 32 years, and the first ever that wasn't from series creator George Lucas. 

While the original Star Wars helped invent the summer movie season, this would be the first film in the franchise to open during the holiday season. This turned out to be a brilliant move. Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened like a summer blockbuster with a then-record $247 million, but had the legs of a holiday release. By the end of its run, Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned $936 million stateside to become not only the #1 domestic release of 2015, but the biggest domestic hit of all time. The Force was strong overseas, too, as the film earned just over $2 billion globally, making it the biggest hit worldwide of 2015. 

Before the year even began, it was a given what the biggest box office hit of 2017 would be — Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It was just a matter of how much money Rian Johnson's followup to J.J. Abrams' well-received Star Wars: The Force Awakens would make. That said, 2017 featured strong performances from several other films. Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast remake opened in the spring, earning $504 million domestically and $1.26 billion worldwide. The Fate of the Furious opened in the summer, earning a respectable $226 million domestically, but making an insane $1.2 billion worldwide, becoming the year's biggest international hit by a pretty sizable margin. But you can't stop destiny, and Star Wars was destined to dominate. 

The Last Jedi opened during the 2017 holiday season with $220 million — less than its predecessor, but not surprising given it lacked that film's decades of pent-up demand. However, thanks to a divided response from moviegoers, and a stronger-than-expected performance from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Last Jedi didn't have The Force Awakens' legs. The film made $620 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide, making it the biggest hit of the year. However, its steep decline from The Force Awakens showed there was a disturbance in the Force, and Solo: A Star Wars Story became the first film in the franchise to bomb when it opened just a few months later.

Avengers: Infinity War shocked the world. Not with its $2 billion worldwide gross (which was pretty much a given), but with its ending — the villain Thanos actually won! Sure, everyone knew there was going to be a "Part II," but it was still shocking that a major blockbuster film (from Disney no less) had the Infinity Stones to end with the villain murdering half of the universe. Talk about a cliffhanger. Moviegoers around the world had to know how our heroes would save the day. Disney was smartly coy with their marketing. We didn't even know the film's title until a few months before its release, and the trailers told us practically nothing about the story, only that our remaining heroes would do "whatever it takes" to stop Thanos. 

The mysterious marketing paid off. While it was set in stone that Avengers: Endgame would break records, not even the most optimistic observers could predict that Avengers: Endgame would obliterate the opening weekend record set by its predecessor, earning $357 million domestically, and more than $1.2 billion worldwide. A midsummer expansion propelled Endgame's final gross to $858 million domestically and $2.79 billion worldwide. Its combined total makes it not only the biggest hit of 2019 stateside and worldwide, but the highest-grossing film of all time.