The Most Profitable Movie of All Time

What the public sees when it comes to the success of movies is usually box office sales. Figures for the most successful movies range into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The highest box office sales figure is for “Avatar” (2009) at $2.8 billion. A new measure has been added as the age of streaming video emerges. How many times has a movie been watched online? Among the most streamed movies produced by streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, “The Crown” has been streamed over 16 billion times.

Production studies and film financiers care about another measure, perhaps even more. Did a movie make money? In some cases, producers have been badly burned. “Mars Needs Moms” is often at the top (or bottom) of the lists of films that lost the most money. That box office shortfall has been pegged at over $110 million.

At the far end of the spectrum are films that have been unbelievably profitable. To find the most profitable movies, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the worldwide gross for every dollar in the production budget using data from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. We obtained photos from IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon. To make the list we considered, each had to return at least $29 for every dollar in the production budget.

“The Sound of Music,” which had a production budget of $8.2 million, ran for four and a half years in its initial theatrical release. Its amazing longevity helped it build up its worldwide gross of $286.2 million.

More than five decades after that movie was released, “Get Out,” with a budget only 55% of the musical’s (not adjusted for inflation), returned $50.50 for every dollar it cost.

The most profitable movie of all time was “Mad Max” (1979). Here are the details:

• Average return for every dollar in production budget: $498.80
• Worldwide profit: $99.6 million (1,030th out of 3,469)
• Production budget: $200,000 (3,455th)
• Worldwide gross: $99.8 million (1,409th)
• Domestic gross: $8.8 million (2,932nd)

Click here to read about all the most profitable movies of all time.