The 10 Biggest Box Office Hits And Surprises Of 2023 Ranked

2023 is going to be a year that we look back on for some time as an important one in cinema history. We've had monster hit movies, yes, but more than that, it was a year of transition for Hollywood. The great box office recovery in the pandemic era continued, but it did so by bucking trends. The charge wasn't led by superheroes, nor by Disney remakes or anything we've come to expect over the last decade or so. From adult-skewing biopics to video game icons, and even faith-based cinema, moviegoers turned out this year in unexpected ways.

This will go down as the first year in decades that sequels didn't reign supreme atop the global box office. It marks the first time in recent memory that superhero movies, by and large, weren't a guaranteed pathway to success. It was a year in which one of the biggest movies came out of nowhere after sitting on a shelf for years only to find itself mired in controversy. 2023 is a year for the record books in so many ways.

We're here to look back at this year at the box office, running down not just the biggest movies of the year — but also the most surprising ones. More than just looking at the movies that sold the most tickets, we're here to take a deeper look at this year's biggest success stories. What movies turned the largest profit? Who came out on top? Which moneymakers shocked us the most? To determine this ranking, I looked not just at the hard numbers, but at the cultural impact. The ranking reflects that research, as well as the insights of the my past year of box office coverage here on /Film. There is, without a doubt, much to discuss. Here are the ten biggest box office hits and surprises of the year.

It's nearly impossible to talk about 2023 in review without bringing up Taylor Swift. The massive pop star had the biggest year of her career, in no small part because of "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour." Not just the record-breaking tour itself, but the concert film that was surprise-released in September that went on to essentially save the early fall from being a barren wasteland. When we talk about unexpected, Earth-shattering stuff that happened at the box office 2023, Swift's name is right at the top of that list. Distributed directly by AMC Theatres and announced with little-to-no warning just weeks ahead of the theatrical rollout, "The Eras Tour" galvanized Swifties around the world (particularly in North America), resulting in one of the most unanticipated hits of the year.

All told, the concert film took in $249.5 million worldwide, including a stellar $178.9 million domestically. It also only carried a budget of around $20 million, meaning that Swift and AMC will be rolling in profits from this one. Beyond the straight-up financial windfall that theaters desperately needed at that time, this one may have implications for years to come as other artists — or perhaps even independently produced films — may attempt to circumvent studios in the future and go straight to theater chains for distribution. Swift may prove to be a trailblazer here in that regard.

It probably wouldn't come as a shock to anyone that the fourth movie in a series of movies starring Keanu Reeves did well for itself financially. But what the "John Wick" movies have been able to accomplish, punctuated by "John Wick: Chapter 4," is downright remarkable. Each entry in the franchise has grossed more than the last following the first entry's modest performance. But that first film's audience grew exponentially after it arrived on home video and, from there, things exploded. It all culminated in the monster-sized, three-hour "Chapter 4," which topped out at $440 million worldwide. That includes $187 million domestically and $253 million overseas. Even against a $100 million budget, this was a huge win for Lionsgate.

Just to put things into perspective, "Chapter 3" grossed $327 million worldwide, meaning that the much longer "Chapter 4" took in $113 million more globally. This sort of thing just doesn't happen this late into a franchise except for on the rarest of rare occasions, like "The Fast and the Furious." Now, Lionsgate has itself a $1 billion franchise that has extended to TV with "The Continental," and with spin-offs on the way, including "Ballerina" starring Ana de Armas. And to think the first movie nearly went directly to VOD.

It's hard to quantify just how much people loved 2018's "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Arguably at the peak of superhero cinema as the dominant force in Hollywood, along came this animated masterpiece to shake things up in a big way. Yet, the movie was a somewhat modest (by superhero movie standards) hit, taking in $375 million worldwide against a $90 million budget. But the love for this movie would show itself when this year's "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" finally arrived. The long-awaited sequel delivered the goods, and audiences ate it up.

Broadly speaking, there is this sense that animation is somehow a lesser art form sometimes. Case in point, no animated movie has ever won Best Picture at the Oscars. In recent years, few movies have asserted themselves as a strong case for animation as legitimate cinema quite like these "Spider-Verse" films have. Bigger, more ambitious, and just as stunning as its predecessor, "Across the Spider-Verse" is as legitimate as cinema gets, and it was rewarded handsomely by becoming the breakout sequel of the year.

Against near-universal praise, the film took in a whopping $690 million worldwide, which was split pretty evenly between domestic and international audiences. Or, to put it another way, the sequel grossed 84% more than its predecessor. This sort of jump just doesn't happen all that often in the realm of blockbuster cinema. In a year when so many superhero movies underperformed, audiences voted feverishly with their dollars in favor of Miles Morales and the Spider-Verse.

Heading into 2023, "Oppenheimer" was without a doubt one of the biggest question marks on the release calendar. With a star-studded cast and Christopher Nolan at the helm, would audiences turn up for a biopic about the man who birthed the atomic bomb? What's more, would the hulking three-hour runtime be off-putting to general moviegoers? And, to complicate matters even further, would going up directly against "Barbie" hurt the movie's prospects? It turns out that audiences were resoundingly in favor of seeing what Nolan had to offer with his take on this historical figure and his transformative creation. Even though "three-hour biopic about people doing science and math" doesn't scream blockbuster, this became the most shocking overperformance by any over this year.

Amidst the "Barbenheimer" craze that the world got caught up in this summer, "Oppenheimer" made dizzying amounts of money, ultimately racking up $953 million worth of ticket sales worldwide, including a tremendous $628 million internationally. With an awards season re-release as well as a pending release in Japan still on the books, Nolan's latest could very well reach the coveted $1 billion milestone before all's said and done. When/if that does happen, it will be the most unlikely movie in history to make at least $1 billion at the box office. The $100 million budget was, to say the least, money well spent.

Yes, it's a movie by one of cinema's most celebrated filmmakers and yes, it features a murderer's row of famous faces led by Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, but adult-focused dramas have suffered greatly in the pandemic era. This movie provided hope to the industry at large that moviegoers will still show up for movies that aren't based on pre-existing IP, or don't have some inherent commercial angle. The appeal of watching Nolan do his thing proved to be enough in this case. Not bad for a movie that didn't top the charts once during its entire run.

It always seemed like a pretty good idea to make a "Barbie" movie. Sure, we've had lots of animated, made-for-kids movies based on Mattel's beloved doll in the past, but we're talking about a real, theatrical movie here. And securing Margot Robbie for the title role? So rarely does something feel so right. Not to mention the perfection of Ryan Gosling as Ken. To top it all off, "Lady Bird" and "Little Women" director Greta Gerwig was at the helm. The stars seemed to be aligned here. Even so, the ceiling for success felt nebulous. What nobody predicted was that this was going to become not just the highest-grossing movie of the year, but one of the biggest movies in history.

Also capitalizing on the "Barbenheimer" craze, Gerwig's movie opened to a stunning $162 million over the summer, shocking the industry. That was just the beginning. It became the movie of the summer and held on for weeks in what will go down as a box office run for the ages. "Barbie" ended up pulling in $1.44 billion worldwide, including $636 million domestically and $804 million internationally. Warner Bros. spent nearly $150 million to produce the film and, ahead of the release, that seemed risky. It would be an understatement to say that the studio's faith in the project was rewarded.

The most surprising part of the whole thing is that Gerwig and Robbie didn't end up making the obvious version of a "Barbie" movie. They made a PG-13 movie that was surprisingly existential and had something to say. There was undoubtedly a safer, more obvious version of this movie. Gerwig delivered anything but that. The fact that audiences rewarded that creativity signaled to Hollywood at large that safe (some might say boring) has a ceiling. With great risk comes great reward proved true in this case.