Hitting a billion dollars at the worldwide box office used to be the ultimate measure of a cinematic phenomenon. It used to show an ability to have more than just one weekend of success and stood as testament to a film's popularity, but it's become increasingly common in recent years; of the nineteen films to have passed the one billion mark, only three come from before the new millennium (and only one of those did so without a hefty 3D re-release). Clearly inflated ticket prices have meant more movies can hit that momentous number, while the industry's continued obsession with franchise cinema has certainly helped. Most of these movies tend to be part of already successful mega-franchises, with the only totally original movies to be in the club being Avatar and Titanic. Of course, how much money a film makes makes very little difference to whether it's any good - The Shawshank Redemption, top of the IMDb 250 at the time of writing, only just made its budget back, nowhere near to breaking even when marketing is taken into account - but that doesn't mean it's not interesting to see how financially successful a movie is; after all, it does serve as a barometer as to what's popular with the general public. Looking forward over the big movies slated for the next couple of years, here's a prediction of the next ten movies that will make of $1 billion at the worldwide box office.
