What's the highest-grossing movie franchise?

In the grand saga of cinema, sequels are the plot twist no one saw coming—except everyone did. What started as a "Hey, that worked, let's do it again!" has evolved into a complex algorithm of nostalgia, market research, and enough CGI to make a supercomputer blush.

Hollywood's franchise obsession has reached pandemic levels, with no cure in sight. We've gone from "The Godfather Part II" to "Fast and Furious 27: Still Furious-er" (okay, we made that one up, but admit it—we'll get there eventually). It's as if the film industry took Moore's Law and applied it to sequel production instead of transistors.

Time to crunch some numbers. These franchises entertain the masses while generating revenue that would make small countries consider a career in screenwriting. We're talking about blockbusters that obliterate the bank, reconstruct it, and smash it again, all before the post-credits scene rolls.

The most successful franchises have transcended mere moviedom. They've become cultural phenomena, spawning everything from theme park empires to college courses. (Imagine majoring in Jedi Studies with a minor in Wakandan Technology—the student loans would be worth it.) These cinematic universes have expanded faster than the actual universe, leaving astrophysicists scratching their heads and accountants reaching for calculators with extra zeroes.

In this high-stakes game of cinematic Monopoly, some franchises have built hotels on every property. Weekend box office reports read like Fortune 500 listings. But among these titans of ticket sales, one behemoth stands taller than Godzilla on stilts. This franchise seemingly found the cheat code to the box office game and has been button-mashing ever since.

Which franchise has earned so much, it could probably afford to buy the actual Infinity Stones and store them on its own personal Death Star?