As the size of the video game industry grew throughout the eighties and nineties, so too did the ambition of publishers and developers. No longer content with simply selling games, many sought new ways to market their creations to a larger audience. Theystarted with toysand thenmoved on to television shows. Despite finding success in these areas though, it still was not enough. WhenSuper Mario Bros.debuted in American movie theaters back in 1993, it opened up the floodgates for a stampede of other video game movies.
RELATED:Notable Games Famous Movie Directors Worked On
Nearly three decades later and countless other video game series have made the transition to the silver screen. There have been a few critical hits, but there have been considerably more misses. Looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that a movie doesn’t need to be popular with critics for it to be a box office hit. In fact, many of the highest-grossing video game movies of all time were panned by critics. Put simply, success is often determined more by a series' popularity than it is by the movie’s quality. This is something that’s all too clear when looking at the highest-grossing video game movies.
Updated July 02, 2025, by Tom Bowen:Given that most modern AAA video games tend to be story-heavy affairs with cinematic cutscenes and top-tier voice acting, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see so many of them being adapted into big-budget movies. Many of the earlier video game movies were a little questionable in the quality department, but still managed to perform well at the box office thanks to their respective games' popularity. Some of the more recent examples are much improved in this regard, with Hollywood finally appearing to have cracked the formula after a decade or two of Frankenstein-esque failures. Even so, there’s still a somewhat noticeable divide between the highest-grossing video game movies of all time and the very best ones.
12Tomb Raider ($274m)
AlthoughLara Croft: Tomb Raiderhad performed fairly well at the box office, its sequel failed to deliver and the series lay dormant for 15 years. With the huge success of Crystal Dynamics’Tomb Raiderreboot though, Warner Brothers decided to try their hand at rebooting the movie series as well. In retrospect, they’re probably glad that they did.
Angelina Jolie was replaced with Alicia Vikander and Roar Uthaug was brought in to direct.Tomb Raiderfared much better with critics than earlierTomb Raidertitles and generated a very respectable amount at the box office too. In particular,Tomb Raiderperformed well in the Chinese, French, and UK markets but fell agonizingly short of matching the performance ofLara Croft: Tomb Raider.
11Lara Croft: Tomb Raider ($274m)
Just $53k dollars separateLara Croft: Tomb Raiderand the 2018 reboot, which in the grand scheme of things is a minuscule amount. The $131m that the movie made at the domestic box office, however, is fairly significant and beats the reboot’s US performance by a considerable margin. The movie’s success at the box office perhaps doesn’t tell the whole story though.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raiderhas a critic approval rating of just 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and Angelina Jolie earned a nomination for the worst actress award at the 2001 Golden Raspberries for her portrayal of Lara. Luckily for Angelina, she lost out on the Razzie to Mariah Carey. To say that some people were not impressed with her performance in the movie would be putting it kindly.
10Resident Evil: Afterlife ($300m)
Resident Evil: Afterlifeis the fourth movie adaptation of theResident Evilseries and marked the return of Paul W. S. Anderson to the director’s chair. Although filming took place primarily in Toronto, much of the movie’s plot takes place in Tokyo and this helped to boost the movie’s performance in the Japanese market. In total,the movie generated $55m in Japan, which was almost as much as it managed domestically.
It might have been a big hit in Japan and at the box office in general, but critics were once again unimpressed. The movie has a critic approval rating of just 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the second-worst title in the series. That it’s also the series' second-highest-grossing entry likely softens that blow a little though.
9Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ($312m)
The much-malignedResident Evilmovies have always performed strongly in spite of their generally poor reception from fans and critics. Together, they’ve brought in more than a billion dollars, andResident Evil: The Final Chapteris responsible for a good chunk of that.
RELATED:Resident Evil: Every Playable Character Ranked
The movie owes much of its success to the Chinese market, which was responsible for more than half of its box office total. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t go down quite so well with Western audiences, with its critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes currently sitting at just 37% after 100 reviews.
8Sonic The Hedgehog ($320m)
Fans were a little worried when the first trailer for the blue blur’s silver-screen debut dropped. Thankfully, Sega addressed these concerns by making some tweaks toSonic’s design. The resulting movie did enough to impress both fans and critics with it currently holding a critic approval rating of 63% and a hugely impressive 93% audience score over on Rotten Tomatoes.
More importantly, perhaps,Sonic the Hedgehogperformed incredibly well domestically and currently holds the record for the best-ever opening weekend for a video game movie. Unfortunately, its performance in China was way below expectations, but considering the world is in the middle of a global pandemic, its box office returns are impressive nonetheless.
7Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($324m)
Following the runaway success of the firstSonic the Hedgehogmovie, it seemed somewhat inevitable that Sonic would at some point return toSega’s ever-expanding cinematic universe. Though most seem to be in agreement that the 2022 sequel doesn’t quite reach the same lofty heights as its predecessor, it was still able to surpass it at the box office in spite of one or two less than stellar reviews.
With Japanese and Chinese releases still to come, it seems likely thatSonic the Hedgehog 2’s lead over the original movie is only going to get bigger as time goes by. With morelarger-than-life characters in the form of Knuckles and Tails, this does seem somewhat fitting, though the movie’s regular use of toilet humor may not go down well with everyone who watches it.
6Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time ($336m)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Timefeatures some big names and, as a result, was able to generate some big numbers. It holds the record for the fifth-highest opening for a video game movie and went on to surpass four of the five titles ahead of it with a box office total of $336m.
Despite its strong box office showing though, the movie failed to impress critics.Sands of Timehas a Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating of just 37%. Viewers were a little more forgiving, giving it an average score of 58%. The movie’s strong home media performance followed this pattern too, with the DVD and Blu-Ray releases generating an additional $34m in revenue in the six months following their release.
5The Angry Birds Movie ($352m)
On paper, a movie about a video game as simplistic asAngry Birdsshould never have worked. The games feature no real plot and a mechanic that, although enjoyable to begin with, gets old pretty quickly. It’s therefore a good job for Columbia Pictures that movies are not played out on paper.
RELATED:Old Mobile Games That Are Still Really Active
Some reports suggest that Sony Entertainment splashed out around $100m to market and distribute the movie and this likely played a big part in the movie’s success.TheAngry Birds Moviegenerated $352m in box office revenue which lead to anet profit of around $72m. This makes it the most successful Finnish movie of all time by a considerable margin. The birds might be angry, but those involved with the film’s production and distribution were probably pretty happy about that.
4Uncharted ($395m)
Few PlayStation exclusive series are better suited to a movie adaptation as Naughty Dog’sUncharted.Nathan Drake is about as close as they come to a modern-day Indiana Jones, and while some may feel that Tom Holland’s boyish good looks make him the wrong choice for the leading role, it’s difficult to argue that the high octane action scenes and explosive setpiece moments that punctuated the two-hour movie weren’t perfectly executed.
At the time of writing, its $395 million box office return makesUnchartedthe third-highest grossing movie of 2022 and the fourth most successful video game adaptation of all time. With Holland suggesting that he may take a break from acting in the not too distant future, fans may have to wait a while for a sequel, but with Sony seemingly ready to adapt more of its IPs for the big screen, there’ll likely be plenty ofother great video game moviesto choose from in the meantime.
3Rampage ($428m)
Many gamers have probably never heard of Midway’sRampageseries. For this reason, it seemed to many like a pretty strange choice for a movie adaptation. Strange as the choice may have been though, it turned out to be a pretty good one. The movie might not have impressed critics too much, but it sure did sell a lot of tickets.
Warner Brothers invested a significant amount of money into the production and marketing of the movie and this proved to be a risk worth taking.Rampagedid exceptionally well in China, grossing $156m and becoming the studio’s second-best performing movie in the region to date.
