Biggest blockbuster movie of every summer since 2000

The summer movie season is home to some of the biggest blockbusters of the year. Every year, audiences can expect theaters to be packed with superhero films, animated adventures, and other franchise favorites.

With the summer 2019 movie season officially over, we looked back at the biggest movie of every summer since 2000, based on how much it made in the US (per numbers from Box Office Mojo), adjusted for inflation. We counted films that came out May through August (so no, “Avengers: Endgame” didn’t make the cut for this list).

READ MORE: Disney’s focus on ‘Star Wars’ for its Netflix competitor shows it’s not worried about fan fatigue, but experts say the franchise needs to reinvent itself to thrive

Superheroes, animated films, and Disney have ruled most summers in this timeframe, and it shows just how quickly Disney has dominated the industry. In the 2000s, Disney had only one movie rule the summer: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” in 2006.

“Finding Nemo” was the biggest summer movie of 2003, but Disney didn’t acquire Pixar until 2006; similarly, Disney didn’t purchase Lucasfilm until 2012, and “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” was the biggest movie of the summer of 2005.

But this decade, Disney released seven of the 10 highest-grossing films of each summer, including three from Pixar and three from Marvel Studios.

For this list, we’ve also provided the movie’s original domestic gross, its worldwide gross, and its Rotten Tomatoes critic score for comparison. Some films that raked in the big bucks performed terribly with critics (we’re looking at you, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”).

Below is the highest-grossing movie in the US of every summer since 2000: