The Top 100 Biggest Movies of the '90s

The Top 100 Biggest Movies of the ’90s

Ahhh, the ’90s, a Tamagotchi, dial-up speed, Blockbuster Video loving decade, but full of great movies. Let’s see what were the most popular films at the North American box office based on ticket sales, as this is the fairest way to compare how movies fared against each other. All data was obtained from ‘The Numbers’ website.

Quick Nerdy Financial Facts:
So to help you understand the ticket sales numbers more clearly, a film’s budget is relevant to the number of sold tickets required for a movie to be profitable. But, if we take an average, if a movie has sold 15 million tickets in the North American market, then I’d consider that movie to have done pretty good! (unless it’s a huge budget picture) If it has managed 25 million tickets, then it’s a bona fide massive hit. 35 million, and its party poppers all round. Above this, it’s in the upper realms of movie history forever.

100 – The Pelican Brief (1993)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,268,124

SYNOPSIS:

Two Supreme Court Justices have been assassinated. One lone law student has stumbled upon the truth. An investigative journalist wants her story. Everybody else wants her dead.

99 – Unforgiven (1992)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,392,112

SYNOPSIS:

William Munny is a retired, once-ruthless killer turned gentle widower and hog farmer. To help support his two motherless children, he accepts one last bounty-hunter mission to find the men who brutalized a prostitute. Joined by his former partner and a cocky greenhorn, he takes on a corrupt sheriff.

98 – Goldeneye (1995)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,420,168

SYNOPSIS:

When a powerful Russian satellite weapon is hijacked by a mysterious crime syndicate, it’s up to James Bond, with the help of programmer Natalya Simonova, to find the culprits and save the world from disaster.

97 – Face/Off (1997)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,461,033

SYNOPSIS:

In order to foil a terrorist plot, an FBI agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and assumes the identity of a criminal mastermind, who murdered his only son. The plan turns sour when the criminal wakes up prematurely and seeks revenge.

96 – Dick Tracy (1990)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,582,636

SYNOPSIS:

The comic strip detective finds his life vastly complicated when Breathless Mahoney makes advances towards him while he is trying to battle Big Boy Caprice’s united mob.

95 – A Time to Kill (1996)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,607,693

SYNOPSIS:

A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.

94 – In the Line of Fire (1993)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,696,587

SYNOPSIS:

Veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan is a man haunted by his failure to save President Kennedy while serving protection detail in Dallas. Thirty years later, a man calling himself “Booth” threatens the life of the current President, forcing Horrigan to come back to protection detail to confront the ghosts from his past.

93 – The World is Not Enough (1999)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,883,847

SYNOPSIS:

Greed, revenge, world dominance and high-tech terrorism – it’s all in a day’s work for Bond, who’s on a mission to protect a beautiful oil heiress from a notorious terrorist. In a race against time that culminates in a dramatic submarine showdown, Bond works to defuse the international power struggle that has the world’s oil supply hanging in the balance.

92 – Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,895,837

SYNOPSIS:

Summoned from an ashram in Tibet, Ace finds himself on a perilous journey into the jungles of Africa to find Shikaka, the missing sacred animal of the friendly Wachati tribe. He must accomplish this before the wedding of the Wachati’s Princess to the prince of the warrior Wachootoos. If Ace fails, the result will be a vicious tribal war.

91 – Maverick (1994)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,909,625

SYNOPSIS:

Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional three thousand dollars in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game that begins in a few days, so he joins forces with a woman gambler with a marvellous southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.

90 – American Beauty (1999)

TICKETS SOLD:

24,933,544

SYNOPSIS:

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter’s attractive friend.

89 – Mulan (1998)

TICKETS SOLD:

25,718,604

SYNOPSIS:

To save her father from certain death in the army, a young woman secretly enlists in his place and becomes one of China’s greatest heroines in the process.

88 – Interview with the Vampire (1994)

TICKETS SOLD:

25,732,083

SYNOPSIS:

A vampire relates his epic life story of love, betrayal, loneliness, and dark hunger to an over-curious reporter.

87 – Indecent Proposal (1993)

TICKETS SOLD:

25,752,188

SYNOPSIS:

John Gage offers a down-on-his-luck yuppie husband $1 million for the opportunity to spend the night with the man’s wife.

86 – Pulp Fiction (1994)

TICKETS SOLD:

25,779,670

SYNOPSIS:

Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are hitmen with a penchant for philosophical discussions. In this ultra-hip, multi-strand crime movie, their storyline is interwoven with those of their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) ; his actress wife, Mia (Uma Thurman) ; struggling boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) ; master fixer Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) and a nervous pair of armed robbers, “Pumpkin” (Tim Roth) and “Honey Bunny” (Amanda Plummer).

85 – A League of Their Own (1992)

TICKETS SOLD:

25,911,789

SYNOPSIS:

As America’s stock of athletic young men is depleted during World War II, a professional all-female baseball league springs up in the Midwest, funded by publicity-hungry candy maker Walter Harvey. Competitive sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller spar with each other, scout Ernie Capadino and grumpy has-been coach Jimmy Dugan on their way to fame.

84 – The Green Mile (1999)

TICKETS SOLD:

26,248,754

SYNOPSIS:

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people’s ailments. When the cell block’s head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey’s miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man’s execution.

83 – The Truman Show (1998)

TICKETS SOLD:

26,784,264

SYNOPSIS:

Truman Burbank is the star of The Truman Show, a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show that broadcasts every aspect of his life without his knowledge. His entire life has been an unending soap opera for consumption by the rest of the world. And everyone he knows, including his wife and his best friend is really an actor, paid to be part of his life.

82 – Stuart Little (1999)

TICKETS SOLD:

26,875,823

SYNOPSIS:

The adventures of a heroic and debonair stalwart mouse named Stuart Little with human qualities, who faces some comic misadventures while searching for his lost bird friend and living with a human family as their child.

81 – The Addams Family (1991)

TICKETS SOLD:

26,971,633

SYNOPSIS:

When a man claiming to be long-lost Uncle Fester reappears after 25 years lost, the family plans a celebration to wake the dead. But the kids barely have time to warm up the electric chair before Morticia begins to suspect Fester is fraud when he can’t recall any of the details of Fester’s life.

80 – Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,146,710

SYNOPSIS:

A deranged media mogul is staging international incidents to pit the world’s superpowers against each other. Now James Bond must take on this evil mastermind in an adrenaline-charged battle to end his reign of terror and prevent global pandemonium.

79 – My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,627,965

SYNOPSIS:

When she receives word that her longtime platonic pal Michael O’Neal is getting married to debutante Kimberly Wallace, food critic Julianne Potter realizes her true feelings for Michael — and sets out to sabotage the wedding.

78 – Patch Adams (1998)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,649,851

SYNOPSIS:

The true story of Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.

77 – The Blair Witch Project (1999)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,665,176

SYNOPSIS:

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.

76 – Die Hard 2 (1990)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,801,866

SYNOPSIS:

Off-duty cop John McClane is gripped with a feeling of déjà vu when, on a snowy Christmas Eve in the nation’s capital, terrorists seize a major international airport, holding thousands of holiday travelers hostage. Renegade military commandos led by a murderous rogue officer plot to rescue a drug lord from justice and are prepared for every contingency except one: McClane’s smart-mouthed heroics.

75 – Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

TICKETS SOLD:

27,813,348

SYNOPSIS:

In the combustible action franchise’s final installment, maverick detectives Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh square off against Asian mobster Wah Sing Ku, who’s up to his neck in slave trading and counterfeit currency. With help from gumshoe Leo Getz and smart-aleck rookie cop Lee Butters, Riggs and Murtaugh aim to take down Ku and his gang.

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