The Most Lucrative Horror Movie Franchises Ever

The Exorcist franchise boasts the top-grossing single horror film and the top-grossing series on our list. The first movie alone, which earned $860.76 million at the box office, would be enough to take the top spot. Add in the other five films, and you have a 10-figure franchise. While none of the subsequent films even came close to the original, Exorcist II: The Heretic, the second-highest earning film in the series, earned a respectable $115 million.

With 12 films total, it’s perhaps little surprise that the Friday the 13^th series is so high up on the list. The original film, from 1980, remains the most profitable of the bunch: made on a $550,000 budget, it grossed $39.75 million, or $123.25 million when adjusted for inflation. And it has major cultural currency beyond its box office success, with television spinoffs, comic books, and novels based on slasher Jason Voorhees, as well as turning a white hockey mask into a perennial symbol of terror.

Propelled by the success of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the Hannibal Lecter franchise is one of the most successful despite being comprised of just five films. The original film, 1986’s Manhunter, was the least lucrative, grossing just $19.38 million (adjusted for inflation), while The Silence of the Lambs grossed over $130.7 million ($259 million adjusted) on a $19 million budget. It was also a critical success, winning the Academy Awards for Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter), Best Actress (Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling), Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture.

Wes Craven’s classic horror franchise comes in close on the heels of the Hannibal series, its nine films grossing well over $650 million to date. This is another franchise where the original film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is not the top-grossing – and in fact, its inflation adjusted box office sales of $60.88 million place it seventh in the series, behind even the 2010 remake of the 1984 classic.

The film that ignited the slasher genre, the original Halloween grossed about $47 million in 1978 ($167.5 million today) on a shoestring budget of $325,000, making it one of the most successful independent movies of all time. It catapulted the original Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, to fame and made Michael Myers a household name, and produced one of the creepiest and most recognizable scores in horror films to date (not to mention it turned a $1.98 William Shatner mask into one of the most terrifying murderer getups on film).

Wes Craven’s Scream reignited a tired genre and became one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed slasher flicks of all time. It was made for $15 million, with subsequent movies getting increasingly larger budgets (Scream 2 was made for $24 million, and Scream 3 and 4, $40 million apiece). Scream 4, which hit theaters in 2011, didn't fare nearly as well as the first three films — it made just $39.5 million domestic, though worldwide box offices more than doubled that figure — and it's unclear whether reports of a fifth and sixth installment will come to fruition.

Ah yes, torture porn. A little less sophisticated than some of the other franchises on this list, Saw nonetheless dominated the box office, with Saw II and Saw III grossing over $100 million apiece. The, um, appeal of the films may be wearing off, though, with the last two in the series -- Saw VI and Saw 3D -- earning significantly less than the other films, at $30.35 million and $47.95 million, respectively. Although, with budgets of $11million to $20 million, maybe we'll continue seeing Saw in theaters.

Despite its latest iteration tanking at the box office this past weekend, the Paranormal Activity franchise remains highly lucrative, earning over $415 million domestically. The first film was made for $15,000 (and acquired by DreamWorks for $350,000) and became the most profitable film ever based on return-on-investment, according to some sources.