20 Highest-Grossing Movie Franchises Ranked Worst To Best
The best and worst of cinema's most lucrative franchises.
What makes a franchise great? Well, a few things should could to mind: consistency, an engaging plot, strong actors, compelling characters, impressive world-building, innovative scripts and daring are chief amongst them. They also have to tap into the right market, come out at the right time, and be made by the right people.
Basically, there are a lot of things that can either make or break a franchise, and it can be close to impossible much of the time to know whether a new franchise is going to be a commercial or critical hit, or whether it's going to flop right out the gate.
For this list, focus is going to be put on the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time, in an attempt to figure out which of cinema's most popular series are the best of the best, and whether or not they deserved to rake in as much profit as they have.
From superhero extravaganzas to tacky slices of Bayhem, and influential space operas to award-winning fantasy epics, here are the 20 highest-grossing movie franchises ever made ranked worst to best.
20. Transformers
Worldwide box office: $4.48 billion.
On paper, turning the beloved Transformers toy line and TV show into a live-action movie series seemed like a good idea, bursting with possibility and blockbuster potential. But whilst it soared at the box office, the films themselves are far removed from what fans were hoping for.
Save for the recent solo adventure Bumblebee, which was directed by Travis Knight and at least tries to salvage some of the series' dignity, the five mainline movies were helmed by Michael Bay in typically destructive, self-indulgent style.
The first film, released in 2007, had some interesting moments courtesy of its staggering special effects and franchise fan service, but as the sequels wore on Bay's tactless approach to storytelling, character development and fun quickly took hold.
Bayhem squandered the Transformers' potential with overbearing runtimes, unveiled sexism, offensive cultural stereotypes, shaky direction and non-existent care, and by the time Bay left the franchise in 2017, it was too far gone to save.