Which Best Picture winner is the highest-grossing, unadjusted, of all time? The answer is Titanic.
James Cameron’s Titanic won Best Picture at the 70th Academy Awards in 1998, after becoming a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the film combines a fictional romance between Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater with the historical sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.
Titanic earned more than $1.8 billion during its initial worldwide release and exceeded $2 billion after later re-releases, including a 3D conversion in 2012. In nominal, unadjusted box-office terms, that places it ahead of other Best Picture winners such as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Gone with the Wind when comparing reported worldwide grosses.
The phrase “unadjusted” matters. It does not account for inflation or differences in ticket prices, so older films may have sold far more tickets than their raw dollar totals suggest. Gone with the Wind is often cited as the strongest inflation-adjusted contender, while Titanic is the standard answer for the unadjusted worldwide-gross record.