The decade of the 2010s in film involved many significant developments in the motion picture industry as Disney towered all over its competitors. The studio's titles occupy exactly half of the top 50 highest-grossing movies at the worldwide box office of these ten years with solely one of those entries not reaching a billion dollars and the only three features on the entire list to cross the $2 billion mark, while Universal and Warner Bros. share the distant second place at eight titles each. Furthermore, non-Disney films managed to become the top-grosser of a year merely twice during the decade. This domination culminated in the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney.
Trends
Major film studios attempted to replicate the box office dominance of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe (which also had a few releases by Paramount, Universal, and Sony) through establishing their own blockbuster shared universe media franchises. Despite not being as lucrative on average, Warner Bros. was able to build three such franchises with the DC Extended Universe, Conjuring Universe, and MonsterVerse (co-owned by Legendary); while 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise transitioned into being a shared world and Sony's Spider-Man Universe got off to a promising start. However, some other attempts such as Universal's Dark Universe were immediately unsuccessful or ultimately went unproduced. Overall, this movement especially led the superhero film subgenre to attain monumental heights of prosperity. Disney capitalized on nostalgia by producing several live action or photorealistic remakes/re-adaptations of its famous hand-drawn animated films: Alice in Wonderland (2010), Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Dumbo (2019), Aladdin (2019), The Lion King (2019), etc. Film series adaptations of popular young adult fiction novels became more prevalent (three of which were distributed or acquired by Lionsgate, and two by 20th Century Fox). After the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Percy Jackson series ended in the early years of the decade, the trend's focus switched from the fantasy genre to dystopian sci-fi with the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner series. Other efforts of this kind failed to generate any sequels except for DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon series, which took an alternative path by just being loosely based on its source materials and having longer intervals between feature releases (though supported by the likes of short films and TV shows set in the same canon).
Highest-grossing films
The list has more 2019 films in the top 50 than any other year, with nine in total (seven by Disney). It is then followed by 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 with six; 2012 with five; 2013 with four; 2010 and 2011 with three; and 2014 with two (the only year in which Disney did not have a billion dollar grosser and failed to make the list). All but three films (two animated and one biopic) are based on another property. Figures are given in United States dollars.
Highest-grossing film per year
Disney releases were the annual top-grossers for the entire latter half of the decade.
Most acclaimed films
On Rotten Tomatoes, the following five films of the 2010s received 100% critics' ratings.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) Summer 1993 (2017) Leave No Trace (2018) Minding the Gap (2018) Honeyland (2019)
Metacritic listed the following as the top ten highest rated films (at the time of their release) of the 2010s.
Boyhood
Moonlight
Roma
Manchester by the Sea
12 Years a Slave
Gravity
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Carol
The Social Network
Metacritic also listed the following films as most mentioned on critic's lists of the best films of the 2010s.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Moonlight
The Social Network
Get Out
Under the Skin
The Tree of Life
(Tie) Inception and Inside Llewyn Davis
Boyhood
The Master
According to They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, a site which numerically calculates reception among critics, the most acclaimed films of the 2010s are: Portrait of a Lady on Fire The Tree of Life Moonlight Parasite Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives A Separation Melancholia Mad Max: Fury Road Get Out The Turin Horse Holy Motors Under the Skin Zama The Act of Killing Phantom Thread Boyhood Toni Erdmann Once Upon A Time in Anatolia Twin Peaks: The Return The Master
Den of Geek listed the following as the top ten best movies of the decade.