The 10 Most Popular Rock Music Movies

These are the most popular rock music movies.

Because motion pictures about rock music are the absolute best. And thankfully, we have many of them to choose from. But what 10 rock-focused films have proven to be the most popular over time?

Some of the movies in this Top 10 may surprise you. Are you ready to dive in and find out?

But first, a little word about our methodology. To compile this list, we've used the figures adjusted for inflation from Box Office Mojo, which shows each film's territorial and worldwide total gross. To best gauge popularity, we're considering all the money each movie has made over time, so we've gone with the lifetime worldwide gross for each, rather than domestic or international totals on their own.

READ MORE: Rock Musicians' Favorite Scary Films

How do we decide what movies are "rock music movies"? Here, we're looking only at the movies that use rock music as a significant thematic driver. For example, one of the films on this list, 1989's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, appears mostly about time travel on the face of it. Yet the entire narrative hinges on the titular protagonists' quest to form a rock band that will save the world.

And how did we choose what to exclude?

Consider just two examples — a feature film and a biopic — of films that would otherwise appear on this list but are less closely related to rock music. 1984's Footloose ($80,040,027 worldwide lifetime gross) focuses on a town that has outlawed both dancing and rock music, but its thrust is the main character's attempts to overturn the dancing ban. And 2005's Walk the Line ($186,797,986) dramatizes the life of Johnny Cash, who was mainly a country singer, though he's revered widely in rock.

With all that said, let's get going. Keep reading down below to learn about the 10 most popular rock music movies. See you at the movies!