The Only Movies To Gross Over $1 Billion At The Box Office After The Pandemic

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — which broke out in March of 2020 — civilization as we knew it basically ceased to exist. Public spaces that weren't deemed necessary closed down so that people could socially distance amidst the constant presence of the airborne illness, particularly in the times before a vaccine became widely available. Unfortunately for movie theaters, they weren't "essential," and so they closed alongside other perceived frivolities — meaning that the box office effectively died until enough people were vaccinated to return to public.

For a while, it looked like the traditional moviegoing experience might be more or less dead. Fortunately, some blockbusters arrived in 2021 (after Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer introduced incredible and effective vaccines that protected people from contracting COVID-19) and brought movie theaters back towards their former glory ... but it was still diminished. In 2019, a whopping nine movies crossed the billion-dollar threshold, including the year's top film "Avengers: Endgame," the eventual Oscar winner "Joker," and the chapter-closing "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." Since COVID-19 took ahold of the world, only six films since 2019 have earned over a billion bucks at the box office — so what are they, and what do they say about what the industry looks like after a world-changing pandemic?

The third standalone film in Tom Holland's modern "Spider-Man" franchise sees Peter Parker (Holland) at an impasse: specifically, the fact that he's unmasked himself as Spider-Man, and everybody hates him. Desperate, he begs Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for help making everyone forget about his identity, only to keep meddling with timelines until he has multiple multiverses to deal with. In typical Marvel Cinematic Universe fashion, Peter and his allies have to combine forces from these various multiverses ... meaning that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, who both played Peter in different franchises, join Holland on-screen to create a real-life version of the Spider-Man pointing meme.

Emerging shortly after vaccines became widely available and serving as the midpoint of Phase 4 of the MCU, "No Way Home" was an overwhelming success, winning over critics and audiences alike. Not only did the movie earn a billion dollars, but it set an important record in the process; it was the first movie to accomplish that feat since "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" did so in the winter of 2019 and the first film to make that much money during the pandemic. Apparently, the lure of seeing three Peter Parkers in "No Way Home" was simply too much for newly vaccinated audiences to resist, and ultimately, the film proved that audiences were ready to return to movie theaters.

In the spring of 2022, Tom Cruise's long-awaited sequel "Top Gun: Maverick" flew into theaters ... and not only did it crush the box office, it managed to score multiple Academy Award nominations. The film brings Cruise's character Pete "Maverick" Mitchell back as well as original star Val Kilmer as Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (for whom voice synthesis was used for his brief role after he lost his voice to cancer), introducing them to a new generation alongside some rising Hollywood stars. Glen Powell, Miles Teller, Lewis Pullman, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, and Manny Jacinto, among others, joined the projects as new pilots in training who get to work alongside Maverick, with Teller appearing as the son of Maverick's fallen best friend LTJG Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards).

Ultimately, "Top Gun: Maverick" came away with an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and earned overwhelming acclaim from critics, who loved its audacious action setpieces that take place in midair and Cruise and Teller's strong central performances. Not only that, it earned just under $1.5 billion at the box office, marking yet another smash hit for Cruise and making "Top Gun: Maverick" a legacy sequel that proved its worth in spades.

Like "Top Gun: Maverick" before it, the 2022 film "Jurassic World Dominion" is another legacy sequel that crushed the box office ... but this one didn't fare quite as well with critics. The sixth movie in the overall franchise and third in the modern "Jurassic World" films that star Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, "Jurassic World Dominion" envisions a world where regenerated dinosaurs share the earth with humans, including former Jurassic World employees and dinosaur advocates Owen Grady (Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Dallas Howard). Their world is turned upside down when their young ward Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the biological granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) from the original films, is kidnapped, alongside a baby velociraptor Maisie has dubbed Beta ... and suddenly, Owen and Claire find themselves battling the evil corporation Biosyn to get the two back.

When it comes to reviews, "Jurassic World Dominion" was an undisputed bomb; with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 29%, the consensus reads, "'Jurassic World Dominion' might be a bit of an improvement over its immediate predecessors in some respects, but this franchise has lumbered a long way down from its classic start." Apparently, that did nothing to dissuade audiences, who helped the sequel cross just slightly over the billion-dollar threshold and cemented the movie as a bona-fide box office success, reviews aside.

There are still (somehow) three "Avatar" sequels set to swim into theaters eventually, but for now, director and writer James Cameron can boast that the first two were major financial wins for his original franchise. In the followup to his 2009 film "Avatar," Cameron revisits protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who now lives on the moon of Pandora as a Na'vi alongside his family, including his native wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their children. Unfortunately, the RDA, or the Resources Development Administration — who suffered a defeat at the hands of the Na'vi army in the original film — is back to try and colonize Pandora, forcing Jake and his tribe to seek refuge underwater with the Metkayina, an acquatic people of this fictional world.

Cameron is known for hitting it big at the box office, and "Avatar: The Way of Water" simply continued his winning streak. When all was said and done, the three-hour film earned an astounding $2.3 billion at the box office — and it came away with some critical acclaim on top of that, scoring a spot in the 2023 race for Best Picture at the Academy Awards alongside several nominations (though it lost the top prize to "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and ultimately took home a trophy for best visual effects). 

At first, news of a movie based on the beloved Nintendo video game franchise "Super Mario Bros." probably came off like a soulless cash grab ... and while the movie definitely grabbed cash like the titular Mario grabs mushrooms, it also turned out to be a pleasant surprise for moviegoers curious about the project. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" casts Chris Pratt as the lead plumber, Charlie Day as his brother Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, among others, and watches as Mario and Luigi find a warp pipe in Brooklyn and separated in mysterious places. While Mario ends up in Mushroom Land and meets Peach and Toad, Luigi falls into the Dark Lands and is used by Bowser as a pawn to entrap Mario.

Reviews for "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" were slightly mixed when the movie released, but everybody was more or less in agreement that the movie was a whole lot of fun, especially thanks to the talented voice cast. Clearly, it was enough fun to put the movie comfortably over the billion-dollar mark with $1.36 billion — but at the end of the day, purists will tell you there's only one real "Super Mario Bros." movie.

There's zero question that Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach's "Barbie" movie was the biggest release of 2023, and it's got the box-office draws to prove it ... plus a ton of accolades, including multiple Oscar nods. With executive producer Margot Robbie in the proverbial driver's seat as Stereotypical Barbie — who ends up having an existential crisis when the person playing with her in the "real world" does as well — the film brings audiences on a journey alongside Barbie, who leaves Barbie Land behind to solve her problems in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, while she's on her own mission, Ken — a scene-stealing Ryan Gosling — co-opts Barbie Land and turns it into a shoddy, half-baked patriarchy, at which point Barbie, her new friends Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), and the rest of the Barbies (an all-star cast featuring everyone from Kate McKinnon to Issa Rae) have to band together to win their home back.

An outright phenomenon that made up half of the box-office sensation "Barbenheimer" — thanks to the fact that it shared a release date with Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" — "Barbie" became one of the biggest cinematic success stories in recent memory, earning a whopping $1.4 billion at the box office alongside overwhelmingly positive reviews. It might have missed out at the Oscars ceremony, but the cultural success of "Barbie" can't be understated, and it proved that stories by women, for women can and will crush the box office if given the chance.