James Bond series ranked second most lucrative movie franchise

19-Jun-2005 • Bond News

Whether it's a prequel, a sequel or a remake, it's simply much less risky to use a known brand than to start from scratch," explains Russ Leatherman, aka Mr. Moviephone. In other words, why risk a big-budget flop when you can continue a series that has a built-in audience?

"It's almost a guaranteed financial return," says Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo.

"There's no such thing as a surefire hit in Hollywood," says Entertainment Tonight film critic Leonard Maltin. "But a franchise is as close to surefire as it gets."

To find out just how big--and how popular--movie franchises have been over the years, Forbes turned to Box Office Mojo. The California-based online box-office tracker provided us with both a total domestic gross and an estimate of the number of tickets sold for each of the most popular franchises, which they define as three or more movies.

(Rank, Movie Franchise, Number Of Movies, Lifetime U.S. Domestic Gross 2005 Dollars, Estimated Number Of Tickets Sold )

1 Star Wars 6 $3,531,174,524 560,734,200
2 James Bond 21 $3,332,026,028 544,004,000
3 Jaws 4 $1,306,479,630 182,557,600
4 Star Trek 10 $1,250,673,835 203,135,200
5 The Lord of the Rings 4 $1,201,578,045 186,329,100
6 Rocky 6 $1,175,439,755 176,864,500
7 Indiana Jones 3 $1,160,409,735 191,091,200
8 The Exorcist 4 $1,071,412,803 137,262,100
9 Batman 5 $992,739,135 169,230,300
10 Jurassic Park 3 $957,700,887 168,125,000

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.