This statistic ranks the most popular movie genres in North America by box office revenue. Adventure ranked first, with a total box office revenue of 59.4 billion US dollars. This data is based on a total of 980 adventure movies, which make up a 27.97 percent revenue share of the market. In 2017, the adventure genre accounted for 19.8 percent of the North American box office takings. Ranked first in that year was the action genre, which took 34.8 percent of the market.
Most popular movie genres in North America
Films within the drama, adventure, action and drama movie genres generated the most box office revenue in the years between 1995 and 2018. Adventure films topped the list, with total ticket sales of 59.4 billion U.S. dollars, followed by action films, with total ticket sales of 39.45 billion U.S. dollars. As of April 2018, none of the three most successful movies of all time (in terms of global box office revenue) were comedies. “Avatar” was the most successful movie, having raised 2.8 billion US dollars in box office revenue. “Titanic” came in second with 2.2 billion US dollars raised, and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens" ranked third with 2.1 billion raised. Dramas and comedies also topped the list of movie genres ranked by number of releases in North America from 1995 to 2018. Between 1995 and 2018, over 2.15 thousand comedies and over 4.7 thousand dramas were released.
Box office revenue, the amount of money generated through movie ticket sales, remains one of the motion picture industry’s most important measures of a film’s commercial success. In 2017, almost 1.24 billion tickets were sold in the United States and Canada at an average ticket price of 8.93 US dollars each.
