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Over lunch, I wondered aloud how many of the 100 top grossing movies were either sequels or the first film in a franchise.

Take a moment and think about it.

Of the top movies, what percentage are part of a larger franchise? And we’re only looking at theatrical. For this exercise, home video sequels don’t count.

Around the table, guesses ranged from 50 to 83 movies.

The answer is 86. Yes, 86 of the 100 all-time worldwide top-grossing movies are part of a franchise. (See Update 2 below.)

Here is the list:

Films marked † have a sequel in production or very nearly so. Films marked * could be considered single or part of a franchise.

It’s worth taking a closer look at the 14 films that never got a big-screen sequel, and why:

Titanic, 2012, Interstellar, Gravity
You can’t sink the same boat twice. (Or blow up the same planet/shuttle.)

E.T.
There was apparently talk of a sequel at some point.

Forrest Gump
Eric Roth actually wrote a sequel.

The Lion King, Ratatouille, Up, Inside Out, Big Hero 6
There are rumblings of a Big Hero 6 sequel, and it’s not impossible to imagine big-screen sequels to all of these.

Inception, The Sixth Sense
DiCaprio has never done a sequel. But could you do Inception 2 without him? Sure. And you could do a Sixth Sense sequel without Bruce Willis. I bet we’ll get one of these.

Hancock
Not a hit, not a bomb, but not crying out for a sequel. Also, it’s low enough on the list that it will be knocked off soon.

Whenever you talk about the top-grossing movies, the first question is always, “What about adjusting for inflation?” (Also known as, “What about Gone with the Wind?”)

Fine. Let’s do that.

Here are the top 100 movies of all time, adjusted for inflation:

The ^ indicates that a film has been re-released, which can raise its rank. When in doubt, I’ve labelled films as Single (e.g. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).

What can we learn from looking at the inflation-adjusted list? Well, of the top 100 movies, 49 are neither a sequel nor the start of a franchise. That’s a huge difference from the non-adjusted list.

Hollywood didn’t always make sequels from every hit.

A few observations I’ve made from this exercise:

1. Franchises are a huge part of how Hollywood makes money, not just now but historically.
2. Franchises have to start somewhere. You don’t get Minions without Despicable Me (which isn’t in the top 100).
3. Some franchises I’ve ignored (e.g. The Hobbit, Transformers) have made bank.
4. James Bond is a good business to be in.
5. There’s a reason studios don’t want you to kill the hero at the end of the movie.

Update #1 (1/29/16):

A reader asks what percentage of the top movies are sequels — that is, part of a franchise but not the origin.

On the non-inflation list, 73 of the top 100 are sequels.

Update #2 (1/30/16):

In the first list, I had mistakenly marked Gravity as a franchise. It’s a Single. So that knocks the total number of franchise movies down to 86.

In the second list, readers pointed out that several of the Single movies actually did have sequels: The Sting, Love Story and American Graffiti. I’ve adjusted the number of non-franchise movies down from 52 to 49, and fixed the graphic.

Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo, comes out June 17th. Here’s the trailer. It’s certainly going to exist, which means Finding Nemo counts as a Franchise Origin.

A person could reasonably argue that the Avatar and Frozen sequels won’t happen. But as someone who knows both the industry and the people involved, I very strongly suspect they will. I’m keeping them as Franchise Origins.