Every Film Franchise, Ranked

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – August 9, 2018

Well, maybe not every franchise. But most. We have taken every film franchise for which we have data, calculated an average Metascore for each one, and then ranked the results in the gallery above from worst to best. To be eligible, a franchise must have a minimum of four films with Metascores. That rules out trilogies, obviously.

What else is excluded? A few things:

* Horror film franchises. There are so many of those that we will gather them in their own separate list, which we'll publish later this year. (A few franchises that span multiple genres, like the Alien films, will appear in both lists.)

* Animated films. We are only including live-action movies in this list (mainly to keep the list a somewhat reasonable size—sorry to all you Pokemon and Shrek fans). Note that if a franchise is mostly live-action but has one animated release, the animated film is not included in the average Metascore for that franchise.

* Made-for-TV movies.

* A few franchises where most of the releases were mainly straight to video

* Some very old franchises for which there aren't many reviews still available.

Don't worry: That still leaves over 60 film franchises to rank. Happy browsing!

60 of 64 photo by Warner Bros. Ent.

73.0 #3: Wizarding World

Talk about impressive: The franchise based on J.K. Rowling's YA fantasy books has a perfect record of green scores, even though there are nine films in the series so far. (Only two other franchises have all-green film lists, but those have just four films apiece.)

The eight-installment Harry Potter series wrapped up in 2011 with an average score of just under 74—and cumulative worldwide box office receipts of over $7.7 billion. A spin-off series, Fantastic Beasts, launched in 2016, and is expected to eventually span five films, with the second, The Crimes of Grindelwald, due in November.

The films:
64 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
63 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
82 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
81 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
71 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
78 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
65 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010)
87 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)
66 Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (2016)

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