Had a discussion with two of my friends about this, and want to know you guys' opinions as I respect them and am curious what you think. This is completely off topic from football, but in these days with the boring international break etc. I guess it's fine. Me and my friends landed on this list:

1: Harry Potter
2: Star Wars

3: James Bond
4: Middle Earth
5: Batman
6: Spider-Man
7: X-Men
8: Star Trek
9: Transformers
10: Pirates of the Caribbean

State what you think as well. Take into account everything: amount of fans, commitment of fans, box office, budget, legacy, amount of movies, etc. Especially curious about 1st place.

PS: Don't count Marvel as one franchise as this would just make the list uninteresting; rather separately as one Avengers, one Iron Man, one Captain America, one Thor, etc. Same for Pixar.

A good idea. I agree with almost everything you set up here, and also that Harry Potter is simply the biggest of all in spite of the recent Star Wars rise. I have simply not seen and felt a bigger embrace of something worldwide than when that final HP-movie came out to cinemas. Felt like the whole world was talking and thinking about Harry Potter.

Also agree with top 5, but from there it's very difficult to sayand so many great ones. Some honorable mentions are The Matrix, The Godfather, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Avengers, Toy Story and Shrek.

Harry Potter is at the first place by a long shot. I remember when the final movie came out and there were huge posters all over the place which just mentioned the release date and a caption - "It All Ends"
There was no movie name, no mention of Harry Potter, no cast list.
Everybody just knew which movie they were talking about.

I'd put Star Wars first, Harry Potter second. Avengers would be higher, but so many older people don't do superheroes, and those same people did Star Wars/Harry Potter, so...

I would also have to think that Lord of the Rings is in there somewhere, certainly high enough to get in your top 10.

After doing some quick research, in terms of money adjusted for inflation, Star Wars tops all, even James Bond and Marvel, despite having half the movies of the other two franchises.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises/

@VamosBenfica and saatvik10:

Exactly. Remember there was a poster where it just stood "It All Ends" along the body of a bus without even any image of Harry or any of the other main characters and I was walking the city with a few friends, and one of them asked: "What's that all about?" And us other just laughed. Dont think any of us told him every since but he found out for sure ;)

@SunFlash: Then again, without inflation adjustment, Harry Potter beats Star Wars and James Bond by a good margin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films#Highest-grossing_franchises_and_film_series

I honestly think the best way you can look at the case of HP vs SW is this way: Imagine if a new Harry Potter movie came out years after the final Movie, like the way Star Wars did it. I can't even imagine the chaos. In my view, Star Wars was only ever bigger in North America namely because that's its origin, while Harry Potter is the bigger name worldwide. I love them both equally, but for me Harry Potter is just too massive.

LOTR is of course in there under Middle Earth, number 4. It's is a term used to gather LOTR and The Hobbit.

A new Harry Potter movie is coming out is coming out soon and no one seems to care lol, from your sentence I'm not even certain you're aware.

For seven movies Harry Potter was amazing, I read all the books as well and enjoyed them immensely. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to bring back. With Star Trek, you can have another crew, with Star Wars you can have another Skywalker, Avengers, another hero, but I think it would be very difficult to replicate the Harry Potter feel on newer movies, and in many ways, we're seeing that already.

As for the money point, anything new is going to have far more money on it. Half of Star Wars came out in the 70's, so obviously its grossing will be lower that Harry Potter's.

You and I both know that's not a fair comparison, the new Star Wars movie was an actual Star Wars movie, with same title, characters, etc., the new Harry Potter movie, yes I know very well which, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, is as close to being a Harry Potter movie as any other movie about a magical world.

If a new movie under the name 'Harry Potter' came out, it's a completely different case. People would be talking about it non-stop from the day the news would be out. As for the difficulty of replicating Harry Potter in newer movies and spin-offs is in my opinion just a positive: it's what makes that world so extremely unique.

Myself I've always loved both HP and SW, but I've prefered Harry Potter for one simply reason: Its incredibly deep and comprehensive characters. Nothing is even close. It's the anti-definition of a cliché, and I love those type of movies. You find these modern cliches all the time, which is disappointing. Take the last one I watced, San Andreas, it was so boring I didn't even know if I wanted to watch it through in spite of the very impressive visuals. But this is going onto another area, the point is that to replicate what JK Rowling and the movies largely managed to do with the characters would be extremely difficult.

If you adjust inflation then Godfather should be somewhere on the list ..

You guys forgot the biggest of them all, fast and the furious.

I've always perferred the Star Wars movies to the Harry Potter ones, but at the same time I enjoyed the Harry Potter books more than any other series I have read. I feel like the kind of character depth that was present in the books simply wasn't possible in the movies, particularly in characters such as Ron and Ginny who come off as very one-dimensional in the movies yet are fantastic characters in the books. I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but I find that character depth is hard to show in movies, and Star Wars focuses less on that and more on action/story which makes it a better set of movies than Harry Potter imo.

That being said, wasn't too impressed by the new Star Wars movie, although Rouge One looks great.

@Marcus

If you adjust for inflation, Gone With the Wind is the biggest movie of all time.

@Sun

I've always perferred the Star Wars movies to the Harry Potter ones

You got great taste sun. ;D

Harry Potter may have made about the same or even more in money than Star Wars (I don't know tbh), but HP isn't even close to having the cult-status that Star Wars has.

HP >>>

Star wars is overrated.

"Harry Potter may have made about the same or even more in money than Star Wars (I don't know tbh), but HP isn't even close to having the cult-status that Star Wars has."

This is not just an opinion, but also a blanat lie. In the US, it might be the case, but on worldwide basis, Harry Potter has the biggest cult-status on the planet - by far.

Agree!!! Harry Potter IS THE BIGGEST cult-status on the planet. Why? Mind you that not all girls like Star Wars, including not watching it. But Harry Potter, you can imagine the opposite.

I dont have data to back up my statement, but it's not hard to see this.

Btw, Where is LORD OF THE RINGS????

Or The Hangover

I will say it once again: Lord of the Rings is under Middle Earth along with The Hobbit.

@VAMOS So, its only in america that star wars have been so popular? I'm suprised to hear that, but I guess that make sense. :(

Not only in America, world wide (except in Asia). But not as much as Harry Porter

Yeah, I didn't been to say 'only' the US that Star Wars is more popular, but that is the place where it's known to be more widespread and famous than Harry Potter. If you take Europe for example, Harry Potter has far bigger fame than Star Wars.