They aren’t as consistently successful these days, but for a while there was no subgenre as consistently reliable and lucrative as the superhero film. Summer movie season after summer movie season there would be, say, four superhero films and the worst-case scenario was that one of them would underperform and the other three would soar. But it’s also not as if superhero movies doing well is solely a thing of the past 20 years. There have been superhero movies since the ’70s, it’s just that they were released more consistently starting around 2000. What follows are the 10 most attended members of the subgenre, in terms of adjusted worldwide revenue.
Just missing the cut were Superman (1978), Joker, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Batman (1989). They all made a ton of money, but if adjusting their worldwide totals to 2025/2026 dollars they simply fell just a tad short. Will Avengers: Doomsday end up taking the top spot come December? Time will tell.
10) The Dark Knight — $1.521 Billion
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There have been five big screen live-action Jokers by this point (excluding Cesar Romero’s in the 1966 movie). But when that tag scene in Batman Begins hit viewers’ eyes, there had only been one, and that was Jack Nicholson’s. It was an exciting prospect to get a new Joker for the first time in nearly 20 years.
And, while there was backlash to his casting initially, Heath Ledger made jaws drop as soon as The Dark Knight‘s marketing materials started being released. His buzzy performance was already enough to make Christopher Nolan’s sequel the most anticipated film of the 2008 summer movie season. Toss in the glowing reviews and The Dark Knight benefitted from macro-scale appeal and repeat business.
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9) The Dark Knight Rises — $1.535 Billion
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Domestically, The Dark Knight was the winner of the trilogy. But, worldwide, The Dark Knight Rises was. Leading up to release, Rises was just as hotly anticipated as its predecessor, and that was partly due to it coming on the heels of a truly great film and partly because it was the capper of a three-film narrative.
But the cold and honest truth is that Rises is hardly the movie The Dark Knight is. It meanders in spots, lacks many truly engaging action sequences, and in spite of Tom Hardy’s efforts (or perhaps because of them, in terms of the voice), Bane was a pretty lame villain to send the trilogy out on. Once people got the answers to the questions they were asking come opening weekend, there wasn’t as much drive to return to the film for repeat viewings as there was with the Batman vs. Joker flick.
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8) Captain America: Civil War — $1.563 Billion
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Considering it effectively serves as The Avengers 2.5, it’s no wonder Captain America: Civil War so greatly outperformed its two predecessors. Even though it’s one of the MCU’s best movies, Captain America: The First Avenger didn’t make much of a dent at the box office, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier rebounded greatly, earning over twice as much as the movie that came before. That was a big part of the bump that graced all of MCU movies that came out in 2013 and 2014, the two years after the release of The Avengers.
But then Civil War outgrossed The Winter Soldier by $400 million. A standard Cap movie released in 2016 would have probably just matched Winter Soldier. But have it function as Captain America 3 and Iron Man 4 and you have an even bigger hit on your hands.
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7) Incredibles 2 — $1.608 Billion
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Like superhero movies in general, Pixar has been struggling as of late. A major example is 2025’s Elio, which lost a great deal of money. Pixar was at its critical and commercial height basically from 1995 (when its first movie, Toy Story, came out) to Toy Story 3 in 2010.
Movies came out after that which were successful, e.g. Brave and Inside Out, but there were also movies that underperformed in comparison to expectations, such as Monsters University. Then there were the outright bombs such as The Good Dinosaur in 2015. But the Inside Out movies, Finding Dory, and Incredibles 2 were the major outliers. And, in the case of the latter, it outgrossed its predecessor by over $500 million, and that’s accounting for inflation.
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6) Iron Man 3 — $1.695 Billion
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As mentioned in the Civil War entry, sequels that came out just after The Avengers got a bump. The overarching franchise had found a wider fanbase thanks to that team-up being such a cultural touchstone. It applied to The Winter Soldier, it applied to Thor: The Dark World, and it applied to Iron Man 3.
The difference was, of course, that Iron Man was already a great deal more of a hit with audiences than Thor or Cap. And the bounce reflected that. The first film made $585 worldwide in 2008, the second made $624 million in 2010, and, in 2013, the third film made a gargantuan $1.216 billion. It practically doubled its predecessor’s total. That’s a big deal. Divisive as it was, Iron Man 3 was and remains one of the MCU’s biggest hits.
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5) Black Panther — $1.746 Billion
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After the late Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther proved to be a hit with audiences in Captain America: Civil War, there was plenty of hope for his solo movie. But few could have seen Black Panther nearly septupling its $200 million price tag.
This was a movie that allowed a healthy portion of the population see themselves in a major A-list superhero’s shoes. And, from the Black community, this film was highly bolstered via word of mouth and repeat viewings. It finally was a mega-budget movie with a non-white protagonist. It was an important film, and audience members of multiple demographics responded.
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4) Avengers: Age of Ultron — $1.925 Billion
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Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn’t nearly as critically adored as the first film, but it was still a moneymaker. It’s just that it wasn’t as much of a moneymaker as the other three team-up movies.
With a net (post-deduction) budget of $365 million, Age of Ultron raked in $1.405 billion in 2015 dollars. Adjust that to 2025/2026 dollars and it’s nearly $2 billion. So, at the end of the day, it’s hard to call Age of Ultron much of a failure. It was just comparatively disappointing.
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3) The Avengers — $2.151 Billion
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To put The Avengers‘ success into context we have to look at worldwide haul compared to budgetary expenditure. Age of Ultron earned about 3.85 times its budget. Again, not a failure by any means.
The 2012 film, however, netted $1.521 billion (in 2012 dollars) against a price tag of at most $225 million. That equates to a haul 6.76 times the expenditure. That’s also better than Avengers: Infinity War‘s return against its budget.
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2) Avengers: Infinity War — $2.654 Billion
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Thanos represented the greatest foe the Avengers had ever faced. And even with Doctor Doom on the horizon it very well may stay that way. He had been hinted at for years, shown briefly throughout multiple movies, and here was the chance for the audience to really meet the tyrant.
And they came out in full force. After Age of Ultron dipped in comparison to its predecessor, Avengers: Infinity War made the MCU feel like a true event once more. Even more people came out to see the final half of the narrative Infinity War started, but the fact remains this was a huge movie. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that one of the main reasons Endgame outgrossed Infinity War was because of this movie’s gut punch of an ending.
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1) Avengers: Endgame — $3.557 Billion
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If you adjust stack up how many tickets Avengers: Endgame sold domestically to all other movies ever made, regardless of genre, it is the 16th highest-grossing film of all time.
And here’s the thing, it made over twice as much as its domestic total overseas. In 2019 dollars, it accrued $2.8 billion which, today, is about $3.55 billion. Long story short, if Endgame is ever beaten by another superhero movie, even Doomsday, it would be a major shock. This was an event of the highest order.
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