Steven Spielberg Becomes First Director to Top $10 Billion at Worldwide Box Office

“Ready Player One” filmmaker is more than $3 billion ahead of his next competitor

steven spielberg
Getty Images

Steven Spielberg has further cemented his reputation as the most commercially successful filmmaker of all time, becoming the first director to ever gross more than $10 billion at the worldwide box office.

His new sci-fi blockbuster “Ready Player One” has racked up $475.1 million worldwide since its release last month, according to BoxOfficeMojo, making the adaptation of Ernest Cline’s best-selling novel his top-grossing film in the last decade and nudging him into eight figures in all-time career grosses.

What’s more, Spielberg is more than $3 billion ahead of the next director on the all-time box office list: Peter Jackson, whose “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies propelled him to a lifetime gross of $6,520.7 billion worldwide.

Next up are Michael Bay ($6.451 billion), James Cameron ($6.139 billion) and Harry Potter series filmmaker David Yates ($5.347 billion).

Spielberg’s all-time top performer was 1993’s “Jurassic Park,” which grossed $983.8 million worldwide. That was followed by 2008’s critically reviled “Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull” ($786.6 million) and the 1982 classic “E.T. – The Extra-terrestrial,” which earned $717 million — without adjusting for inflation.

While Spielberg is credited with shaping much of populist cinema with films like “Jaws” and the Indiana Jones series, many of his biggest hits came at a time before opening weekends were a big deal at the box office.

“Crystal Skull” is his biggest opening weekend ever, and even if you adjust the numbers for inflation, Spielberg only has three films with $100 million-plus openings, the other two being his “Jurassic Park” films.

Comments