So which top 80s movies managed to rake in the most money? Well Steven Speilberg and George Lucas cornered five of the top ten slots, including the first four positions. Interestingly, some of the most defining movies of the 80’s barely made it into the charts. Airplane! came in at 81, Terminator at 84, Footloose followed at 85, BettleJuice at 95 and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off scraped in at 99, only beating Private Benjamin (100) by the tiniest of margins for last place. Other notable top 80s movies to make to top 100 list include Rocky III and IV (the first two movies came out in the 76 and 79). If the original Star Trek movie had been made in the 1980s, it would have landed around 48th place, beating it’s three sequels which enter the movie list at 68, 76 and 51 (respectively for II, II and IV).
The figures for the top 80s movie list are in US dollars and a number of factors need to be considered before you can look closely at them, for more details see The numbers game, which also gives a year by year total total box office.