Planet of the Apes Box Office: Every Film's Gross and Budget

The ten Planet of the Apes films have earned about $2.5 billion worldwide, and the table gives each film's budget and gross in release order, using Box Office Mojo for grosses. The saga is counted as nine films plus one spin-off, and the spin-off is Planet of the Apes (2001), directed by Tim Burton.

The highest grossing Planet of the Apes movies, in order, are Dawn of the Planet of the Apes at $710.6 million, War for the Planet of the Apes at $490.7 million, Rise of the Planet of the Apes at $481.8 million, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes at $397.4 million and Planet of the Apes (2001) at $362.2 million. The five original films fill the bottom half, and none of them reached $33 million. If you want the full list of titles first, the Planet of the Apes movies hub and the all Planet of the Apes movies index set out all ten films.

The series falls into three runs, and each earns on a different scale. The original five films, from Planet of the Apes (1968), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, to Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), directed by J. Lee Thompson, grossed about $82 million together. Planet of the Apes (2001), Tim Burton's standalone spin-off, made $362 million by itself. The modern run, from Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), directed by Rupert Wyatt, to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), directed by Wes Ball, took in roughly $2.08 billion, which is more than 80 percent of the franchise total.

A few caveats matter when you read any Planet of the Apes box office numbers. Box Office Mojo lists no international gross for four of the five original films, and only $9,865 abroad for Planet of the Apes (1968), so their worldwide figures are effectively domestic ones. The figures are also not adjusted for inflation, which means a 1968 dollar and a 2024 dollar sit side by side in the table. The Numbers, the other standard source for grosses, agrees on several films but differs on others: it lists about $17.5 million domestic for Beneath the Planet of the Apes and about $9.7 million domestic for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and its international and worldwide figures for Rise and War also differ from Box Office Mojo. Every total here uses Box Office Mojo, so the figures stay on one basis.

For viewing, the release order and the story order differ, and the Planet of the Apes movies in order guide lays out both. The Planet of the Apes timeline explains where each film sits in the story.

In my opinion, none of the ten films is a clear flop when you compare gross with budget, though that comparison leaves out marketing costs and the share theaters keep, so it is a rough guide and not a profit figure. What the numbers do show is a series that has stayed commercially viable for more than fifty years, while the margin has narrowed in the most recent film.

The original run is the easiest to misread. Planet of the Apes (1968) made $32.6 million on a $5.8 million budget, and each sequel grossed less than the one before it: $19.0 million, $12.3 million, $9.0 million and finally $8.8 million for Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the lowest gross of the ten. Yet the budgets fell too, from $3.0 million for Beneath the Planet of the Apes down to $1.7 million for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. By my arithmetic, Beneath returned about 6.3 times its budget, the best ratio in the whole series, even though its gross looks small beside the modern films. Perhaps the fairest reading is that the studio shrank the films as fast as the audience shrank, and kept the sequels profitable on paper for that reason.

Planet of the Apes (2001) is the odd one out. It cost $100 million, grossed $362.2 million and returned about 3.6 times its budget, which made it the biggest earner in the series at that time by a wide margin. Paradoxically, it also stood alone, and the next film in the saga, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, did not arrive until 2011. That film is the efficiency winner of the modern run: $481.8 million on a $93 million budget, about 5.2 times over, which is close to the ratio of Planet of the Apes (1968).

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the peak. Its $710.6 million worldwide gross on a $170 million budget is about 4.2 times the cost, and it is the highest gross in the series by a wide margin, ahead of War for the Planet of the Apes at $490.7 million. After it, the ratio slides while budgets stay high. War grossed $490.7 million on $150 million, about 3.3 times its cost, which is slightly more than Rise in raw dollars but a smaller multiple of its budget.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is where the argument starts. It grossed $397.4 million on a $160 million budget, about 2.5 times its cost, and that is well below War's $490.7 million despite a larger budget than War's $150 million. It still earned more than Planet of the Apes (2001), so I would call it a modest success and not a flop. It is also the first film in the series to follow a new lead, Noa, and a story set many generations after Caesar, and it could be argued that a reset of that kind will always start from a lower base than a sequel to a known hero.

What comes next has no box office history yet. 20th Century Studios has Matt Shakman directing an untitled Planet of the Apes film from a script by Josh Friedman, according to TheWrap in May 2026, and the report describes it as a new original story and not a sequel to Kingdom. No release date has been announced, so the film is in development and nothing about its date is confirmed. The next Planet of the Apes film page tracks its status as reports arrive.

If you want to see how these earnings line up with quality, read our Planet of the Apes movies ranked page, and to watch any of the ten, the where to watch Planet of the Apes page lists the services.