Marvel seems to be the gift that keeps on giving for movie makers and audiences alike. There’s even a collective term for the gift — the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) — that describes superhero films produced by Marvel Studios, based on characters from Marvel comics. 

24/7 Tempo has compiled a list of the Marvel movies that did best at the box office, and the numbers are staggering. Some of these movies made more money than the gross domestic products of some countries, with nine of them bringing in more than a billion dollars. 

It can be difficult to keep track of Marvel’s prolific output, with all the individual superheroes, teams, and sagas. To make things harder, characters have been played by different actors. For example, Tobey Maguire played Peter Parker in the Spider-Man trilogy from 2002 to 2007; Andrew Garfield played him in the Amazing Spider-Man duology; and Tom Holland starred in the most recent movies. Click here for 25 sequels that are much better than the original movie.

Click here to see the highest-grossing movies in the Marvel universe

Our list is dominated by Avengers movies, which feature such popular characters as Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor, holding the top four places on this list. This series began with “The Avengers” in 2012 and has gone from strength to strength. “Avengers: Infinity War,” released in 2018, grossed $2 billion. “Avengers: Endgame,” released in 2019, topped that with $2.80 billion, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of all time — after “Avatar.” These are the 50 top-grossing movies of all time.

To determine which Marvel movies did best at the box office, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data for films produced by Marvel Studios from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. Movies were ranked based on the total worldwide box office as of June 2021. In addition to box office data, information on production budget, distributor, and cast also came from The Numbers.