(Credits: Far Out / De’Andre Bush)
In cinema history, thousands of studios have released countless films to a mass audience. The largest studios have taken charge of distributing movies across entire markets, and in the past, they would also run their own cinemas or have exclusive deals with cinema chains.
But only one studio can rule them all. The biggest money-spinning studio in box office history will inevitably be among one of today’s Big Five major studios, all of which date back in some form to the first full decade of Hollywood filmmaking.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to count every penny of box office gross ever taken by each individual studio. No cumulative records of studio box office earnings exist for most studios prior to 1997. However, the data we have from the past 27 years gives us a pretty good idea of which studios have earned the most in history, too, given that six of the top seven earners have all existed continuously since at least 1935. In fact, the top three have been around since 1934 or before.
In seventh place, with over $27 billion in cumulative box office earnings, is 20th Century Fox, which is now a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. Paramount Pictures sits above them in sixth place with almost $39 billion grossed since 1997. Although if we had figures for the preceding 85 years all the way back to their founding, they’d likely place higher.
The top five studios have all managed well over $43 billion in box office takings since records began. It’s no surprise that Walt Disney Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros and Columbia (now owned by Sony) are all up there. But Marvel Studios, another Disney subsidiary, has leapfrogged several more established players into the mix thanks to the behemothic expansion of its cinematic universe over the past decade.
So, who is number one?
According to the records available from Nash Information Services, the highest-grossing film studio in history is Warner Bros, with a gigantic $54.76 billion taken at the box office for its movies since 1997. It’s one of only two studios to have passed the $50 billion mark, along with Universal Pictures in second place.
These two titans of the film industry have both been around for over a century, and they remain at the very top for now. But Marvel is catching them fast. According to current projections, when we come back to this question ten years from now, Marvel Studios will be the undisputed top dog, and Warner Bros will have to do something dramatic to avenge its loss.
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