Only two Steven Spielberg-directed movies have grossed under $100 million at the worldwide box office: Always, which is generally — and rightly — considered to be his worst film, and 1941, the profoundly unfunny comedy starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Other than that, all hits, baby, from Munich‘s $130 million to Jurassic Park‘s incredible $983 million, and everything in-between, including all four Indiana Jones flicks (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is at the top; The Temple of Doom is at the bottom) and his most recent blockbuster, Ready Player One. Thanks to References: The Movie‘s $475 million (which is more than even Jaws made, unadjusted for inflation), Spielberg becomes the first director whose films have taken in over $10 billion.
Thanks to a very long career making very popular movies, Spielberg’s lifetime total is way above any of his competitors. His peers, such as Peter Jackson ($6.5 billion over six Middle Earth movies and three other flicks), Michael Bay ($6.45 billion over 13 movies), James Cameron ($6.1 billion over nine movies, with $4.9 billion coming from Avatar and Titanic alone), David Yates ($5.3 billion over six J.K. Rowling flicks plus Legend of Tarzan), got their hauls almost entirely from a given franchise. (Via)
The only sequels on Spielberg’s filmography are the Indiana Jones tetralogy and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, if you include the films he produced, like Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Transformers (and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and…), that $10.01 billion quickly increases to $17.2 billion. That’s almost enough money to build your own dinosaur theme park. Say, there’s an idea.
What could possibly go wrong?
(Via Forbes)
