A film series or movie series (also referred to as a film franchise or movie franchise) is a collection of related films in succession that share the same
fictional universe
A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes may ...
, or are marketed as a series.
This article explains what film series are and gives brief examples of movie series. The body shows a list of the most popular film series and franchises in the United States and Canada.
Description
Sometimes the work is conceived from the beginning as a multiple-film work—for example, the ''
Three Colours
The ''Three Colours'' trilogy (french: Trois couleurs, pl, Trzy kolory) is the collective title of three psychological drama films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski: '' Three Colours: Blue'' (1993), '' Three Colours: White'' (1994), and '' Thre ...
'' series—but in most cases the success of the original film (or an original series in the case of the ''
Skywalker Saga
The ''Star Wars'' media franchise, franchise involves multiple live-action and animated films. The film series started with a trilogy set ''in medias res'' which was later expanded to a trilogy of trilogies, known as the "#Skywalker Saga, Skyw ...
'') inspires further films to be made. Individual
sequel
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...
s are relatively common but are not always successful enough to spawn further installments.
As of 2022, the 30 films of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is an American media franchise and shared universe centered on a series of superhero films produced by Marvel Studios. The films are based on characters that appear in American comic books published by ...
form the
highest-grossing film series even when adjusted for inflation, surpassing
J. K. Rowling's Wizarding World (11 films), ''
Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...
'' (12 films),
Ian Fleming's James Bond (27 films), and
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth (6 films) series.
Box office
Longest-running film series and franchises
See also
*
Lists of feature film series
The lists of feature film series vary by their number of entries including;
By number of entries
* List of feature film series with more than twenty entries
* List of feature film series with 11 to 20 entries
* List of feature film series with t ...
*
Highest-grossing franchises and film series
*
Media franchise
A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program or ...
*
List of highest-grossing media franchises
This article lists notable highest-grossing media franchises. Due to companies and corporations rarely reporting the total revenue(s) figures of their franchises, the list uses estimated figures based on publicly available data and includes th ...
*
List of longest-running video game franchises
This is a list of notable longest-running video game franchises. To qualify for this list, a video game franchise must have seen regular releases, with no more than 10 year-long gaps in-between, for at least 25 years, from a franchise's first relea ...
References
{{Media series
Filmmaking