Billion Dollar movies

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                              12/15/11

Movies that have made billions.

            The way movies are considered successful today is if they make more money than what it took to create them. Throughout the long history of movies, only ten films have achieved such great success that they automatically become one of the best films ever made. All of those ten films are films that have made over one billion dollars at the worldwide box-office since the late 1970s. The ten films are 1997’s Titanic, 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, 2008’s The Dark Knight, 2009’s Avatar, 2010’s Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3, 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and so far 2012s The Avengers.

            These films have many similarities between them. The first is that they were made by renowned directors, like James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton, Michael Bay, and Joss Whedon. Another similarity is that they all have an all star cast of famous actors, like Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Robert Downey, Jr., Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio, Chris Evans and Helena Bonham Carter. So far, seven of the eleven films that have made over one billion dollars have won one or more Academy Awards. Whether it’s Avatar winning for its Special Effects, The Dark Knight for Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger, or the third Lord of the Rings winning as many awards as Titanic, including Best Picture.

            Both Titanic, the first billion dollar movie, and Avatar, the first two billion dollar movie, were directed, edited, written, and produced by James Cameron, the only man to direct two billion dollar films. After the success of all of his previous films, like The Terminator and True Lies, Cameron worked on Titanic, his only epic historical drama, non-science fiction or straight action film. At the time it became the most expensive film costing two hundred million dollars. However, when it came out in late 1997, it became the first film to earn over one billion dollars and went on to win multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, and Editing for Cameron. In between Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron didn’t work on any other film. During that time other films made over a billion but none beat Titanic until Cameron’s own Avatar came out.

            One thing about the future of movies that’s certain is that more and more films will make over one billion dollars. In fact, they may make even more than one billion dollars surpassing what Avatar made when it came out in 2009.