Top 60 films in Europe by ticket sales since 1996

[The Dark Samurai]

As a big stats and numbers admirer like most members here, i feel that inflation and 3D have distorted popularity of certain films and the good ol' fashioned ticket sales offer very interesting comparisons and very interesting results, like Spider-Man still being the biggest comic book film in Europe ever, or Minions being the biggest animated film or that Deathly Hallows 2 sold 16 million tickets less than HP1 and was basically only as popular as the fourth film, The Goblet of Fire. The Force Awakens will most certainly become Top 7 when 2016 sales are added next year.

 

1) Titanic 111,420,225
2) Avatar 89,868,084
3) The Lord of The Rings The Fellowship of The Ring 61,260,314
4) Harry Potter The Sorcerers Stone 60,577,911
5) The Lord of The Rings The Return Of The King 55,704,577
6) The Lord of The Rings The Two Towers 55,605,106
7) Harry Potter The Chamber of Secrets 52,801,837
8) Minions 49,936,572
9) Skyfall 49,651,063
10) Star Wars The Phantom Menace 48,410,316
11) Finding Nemo 46,479,045
12) Star Wars The Force Awakens 46,041,650 *
13) The Pirates of The Carribean Dead Man's Chest 45,005,547
14) Shrek 2 44,617,053
15) Harry Potter The Deathly Hallows 2 44,483,733
16) Harry Potter The Goblet of Fire 44,402,966
17) Ice Age The Dawn of The Dinosaurs 3,748,747
18) Spectre 43,188,000
19) Ice Age Continental Drift 42,847,191
20) Independence Day 42,595,682
21) The Hobbit 41,626,251
22) Ice Age Meltdown 40,784,646
23) Harry Potter The Prisoner of Azkaban 40,558,063
24) Harry Potter The Deathly Hallows 39,904,925
25) Harry Potter The Order of The Phoenix 38,686,293
26) The Sixth Sense 37,122,356
27) Furious Seven 37,030,783
28) The Pirates of The Carribean The World's End 36,991,906
29) The Hobbit The Desolation of Smaug 36,952,662
30) Jurassic World 36,783,012
31) The Hobbit The Battle of The Five Armies 36,715,424
32) Shrek The Third 36,295,600
33) The Da Vinci Code 36,261,778
34) Harry Potter The Half-Blood Prince 35,624,722
35) The Pirates of The Carribean Tides 35,252,775
36) Frozen 34,851,703
37) Mamma Mia 34,157,157
38) Shrek Forever After 34,152,976
39) Twilight Breaking Dawn 2 34,104,817
40) Spider-Man 33,598,191
41) Man In Black 33,596,664
42) Alice In Wonderland 33,566,430
43) The Matrix Reloaded 33,355,397
44) Ratatouille 31,143,503
45) Star Wars The Revenge of The Sith 33,034,290
46) Inside Out 32,880,388
47) Madagascar 2 32,637,425
48) The Chronicles of Narnia 32,424,205
49) Despicable Me 2 32,328,882
50) Star Wars The Attack of The Clones 31,757,609
51) Inception 30,848,600
52) The Pirates of The Carribean The Curse of Black Pearl 30,809,486
53) Madagascar 30,072,332
54) Twilight Eclipse 30,585,319
55) Twilight Breaking Dawn 30,260,696
56) The Avengers The Age of Ultron 30,136,045
57) Toy Story 3 29,985,255
58) The Avengers 29,707,934
59) Notting Hill 29,690,102
60) The Dark Knight Rises 29,662,630
 

 

* 2015 Sales only. 

 

 

Source: http://lumiere.obs.coe.int/web/search/

[eXtacy]

Was surprised to find the best film from Europe missing - The Intouchables. Where does that rank

[Tower]

1 hour ago, eXtacy said:

Was surprised to find the best film from Europe missing - The Intouchables. Where does that rank

The Intouchables: 43,851,253. Should be 17 between Goblet of Fire and Dawn of The Dinosaurs.

[peludo]

These days we talk a lot about bad exchange rates, but FOTR and HP1 were still more damaged than today films. Incredible figures for both.

 

Btw, @The Dark Samurai, thank you very much for the list . I find this kind of rankings way more interesting than the ordinary WW list

Edited November 5, 2016 by peludo

[James]

Wow. LOTR/Hobbit and Potter are dominating Europe. Really curious if Fantastic Beasts will join the list.

[peludo]

6 minutes ago, James said:

Wow. LOTR/Hobbit and Potter are dominating Europe. Really curious if Fantastic Beasts will join the list.

Maybe it can make Hobbit figures. Although I think that to repeat some characters from LOTR was a big advantage for Hobbit that FB do not have.

[titanic2187]

Titanic was such a giant-ancient monster!!! 

[SchumacherFTW]

How much of Spectre's ticket sales came from us brits eh 

[Gavin Feng]

The Force Awakens is No.2 or No.3 now

[The Dark Samurai]

Update for Star Wars the Force Awakens:

 

63,181,004 tickets sold, making the film the third biggest after Avatar and Titanic.

 

Kind of crazy that no Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter film sold as many tickets, even though Star Wars is generally considered to be not too popular outside USA.

 

Outside of the slight underperformance in China, an absolutely historical box office run.

 

[peludo]

On 10/9/2017 at 9:34 AM, The Dark Samurai said:

Update for Star Wars the Force Awakens:

 

63,181,004 tickets sold, making the film the third biggest after Avatar and Titanic.

 

Kind of crazy that no Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter film sold as many tickets, even though Star Wars is generally considered to be not too popular outside USA.

 

Outside of the slight underperformance in China, an absolutely historical box office run.

 

I think that is a wrong asumption. Episodes I and IV were enormous in Europe too. Both are in the same level of admissions sold than LOTR films in Spain, for example:

 

FOTR 7.0 million admissions

SW4 6.9m

ROTK 6.8m

TTT 6.4m

SW1 6.2m

 

Said this, Lumiere calculates separately European Union and the whole European continent numbers. With that division we have this:

 

European Union

FOTR: 58.4m

HP1: 57.4m

TFA: 54.8m

 

Whole Europe

FOTR: 61.3m

HP1: 60.6m

TFA: 63.2m

 

FOTR and HP1 were bigger in European Union and just with other European countries inclusion, TFA wins. We could make a showdown country by country, but maybe (and just maybe) the expansion of certain big countries during last 15 years like Russia or Turkey which were not accounted in 2001 makes the difference. Russia does not appear for FOTR and the Russian data is ridiculous for HP1 (barely 9,000 admissions).

 

And among big markets we have these:

 

Force Awakens

UK: 17.0m admissions

Germany: 9.0m

France: 10.5m

Spain: 5.3m

 

Star Wars

UK: 20.7m

Germany: 8.0m

France: 8.0m

Spain: 6.9m

 

Phantom Menace:

UK: 13.59m

Germany: 8.0m

France: 7.3m

Spain: 6.2m

 

FOTR: 

UK: 15.98m

Germany: 11.8m

France: 6.95m

Spain: 7.0m

 

HP1

UK: 17.56m

Germany: 12.6m

France: 9.5m

Spain: 6.3m

 

Among big markets (I do not have Italy data), I see a jump in France and Germany, but a drop in Spain relative to the first parts of previous trilogies. And TFA has improved in UK relative to TPM, but not relative to Star Wars. I do not see these numbers so surprising.

[Jiffy]

How the fuck is that Minions figure accurate? 

 

It's market grosses do not look THAT impressive. 

[peludo]

18 hours ago, Jiffy said:

How the fuck is that Minions figure accurate? 

 

It's market grosses do not look THAT impressive. 

According Lumiere:

Russia: 8.4 million admissions

Germany: 6.9m

UK: 6.6m

France: 6.6m

Spain: 4.2m

Italy: 3.6m

Poland: 1.7m

Netherlands: 1.6m

Belgium: 1.0m

 

These markets add up 40.6 million. And there are some markets like Turkey, Czech Republic or Hungary with 700-900k admissions each. It fits.

[FantasticBeasts]

I generally believe that SW wasn't (and isn't still), so popular in countries that weren't very deceloped in the time that the OT debuted. The OT being that old, in many small European countries as well as Asian countries, people weren't regularly visiting cinema, or even If they did local movies were more popular. They weren't really updated with what was happening in Hollywood.

On the contrary, countries like the UK, Germany, France, Spain who have been bigger economies and were more developed  in the time that the OT released, were in connection with the USA and thus they followed American trends more.

That's an explanation that I tried to make so it may very well be wrong. Any correction is welcome.