The Longest-Running Movie Series

Once Hollywood has a prized box office possession in its hands, it’s hard for it to let it go. If the story’s right and you want to make more profit off an IP, then it’s a win-win for the studios and fans. However, sometimes you also just need to know when to quit with a franchise, especially when it’s consistently met with major disappointment.

The following movie series have been at it for a long time, with new projects already in development and no signs of stopping anytime soon (well, at least for most of them). From around 20 to 30 years of these IPs being made to shockingly over 100 years, these are the longest movie series with a lot of luck in the greenlight department.

10

The MCU

36+ Movies And 18+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96% (Black Panther)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 46% (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania)
• Release Years: 2008 – Present

The MCU has been around for less than two decades at the time of writing, yet it already amounts to over 35 movies and counting, as well as plenty of excellent animated and live-action MCU shows on Disney+. New Marvel outings are constantly getting greenlit, with the next megastar-cast Avengers film already underway.

The MCU has been the pillar for comic book adaptations, bringing some of the best Marvel characters to life on the big screen. While the quality of some of the movies has gone down a bit after the epic conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, like Quantumania, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Brave New World, it’s clear there’s no stopping the forces of Marvel and Disney.

9

Fast & Furious

12 Movies And 25 Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82% (Furious 7)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 29% (Fast & Furious 2009)
• Release Years: 2001 – Present

The Fast & Furious Saga is 25 years in the making. There are 11 mainline films and the spin-off, Hobbs & Shaw, which focuses on Dwayne Johnson’s and Jason Statham’s characters. It started as a street race and heist movie following an undercover cop infiltrating the Toretto family, and that family has grown with each new installment.

Tons of huge names have joined the series throughout the years, and while the Fast and Furious movies are all iconic in their own right and pumped full of action and entertainment, only a few can be considered the true greatest of this series. Paul Walker, who plays Brian O’Conner, sadly passed away in 2013, and Furious 7 became the last ‘best’ film.

There’s also the 2002 film Better Luck Tomorrow starring Sung Kang as Han, which is also directed by Justin Lin. While it’s debated if it’s a true part of the series, most widely consider the film a prequel to Han’s story in the Fast & Furious franchise.

8

Scream

Seven Movies And 30 Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82% (Scream 2)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43% (Scream 3)
• Release Years: 1996 – Present

Scream isn’t the oldest horror franchise that’s still kicking. There’s a Friday the 13th prequel show from A24 and Peacock, and Halloween had a new run at Blumhouse. However, Scream is a teen slasher and whodunnit that has really undergone a new resurgence thanks to the directorial duo of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, or collectively, Radio Silence.

The series was started in 1996 by A Nightmare on Elm Street creator Wes Craven, and it features the iconic costumed killer(s?), Ghostface, who’s a deranged horror cinephile. There’s always an awesome whodunnit twist and brutal kills, coupled with memorable characters like Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, David Arquette’s Dewey Riley, and Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher.

The 2022 and 2023 installments brought the best stories since the original, with the seventh film set to release on the 30th anniversary and bringing back tons of past characters.

In 2015, Scream also had an MTV series that ran for three seasons and starred Willa Fitzgerald, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Tyler Posey, Bella Thorne, Sosie Bacon, Tony Todd, and Tyga.

7

Alien And Predator

16 Movies And 38 – 46+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94% (Aliens)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 12% (Alien vs. Predator: Requiem)
• Release Years: 1979, 1987 – Present

Alien and Predator started in two different decades, with Ridley Scott’s Alien releasing in 1979 and John McTiernan’s Predator in 1987, and somewhere along the way, the two Disney franchises crossed over, leading to many comics, movies, and game adaptations as a result.

After the lukewarm Predator sequels and Ridley Scott Alien prequels, the 2020s have bestowed you with the Predator prequel, Prey, starring Amber Midthunder, and Fede Álvarez’s sequel, Alien: Romulus. Now, the Romulus sequel is already underway, and Dan Trachtenberg returns in 2025 with Predator: Badlands and the animated film, Predator: Killer of Killers. The TV series Alien: Earth also premieres on FX and Hulu in 2025.

6

Star Wars

13+ Movies And 48+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95% (Star Wars: Episode 5 – The Empire Strikes Back)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 18% (Star Wars: The Clone Wars)
• Release Years: 1977 – Present

Like the MCU and Alien franchise, Star Wars is also owned by Disney, so don’t think that this series is ever going to end. With all the new lore and characters being introduced across every canon project, there seems to be an endless amount of content to create for Star Wars, with Andor, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian representing the best live-action television series.

In 1977, A New Hope changed the landscape of sci-fi storytelling and VFX, and then The Empire Strikes Back became the best sequel of all time. The prequel trilogy had its iconic moments and terrific lightsaber battles, especially Revenge of the Sith, and then also came Disney’s divisive sequel trilogy. And now, you have The Mandalorian and Grogu as a feature film.

5

The Exorcist

Seven Movies And 52+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78% (The Exorcist)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 22% (The Exorcist: Believer)
• Release Years: 1973 – Present

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was released over 50 years ago and has solidified itself as a horror movie masterpiece. Based on the book by William Peter Blatty, the eerie film follows a helpless, possessed girl named Regan MacNeil, iconically portrayed by Linda Blair, as well as the priests Father Damien Karras and Father Lankester Merrin, who are sent to help her.

There were sequels, with 1990’s The Exorcist 3 even written and directed by the original author himself, William Peter Blatty, and then also a prequel attempt in 2004 starring Stellan Skarsgård, Exorcist: The Beginning. In 2023, David Gordon Green made the poorly received legacy sequel, The Exorcist: Believer. Now, The Exorcist is in better hands with director Mike Flanagan.

4

Planet Of The Apes

11 Movies And 57+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94% (War for the Planet of the Apes)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 33% (Battle for the Planet of the Apes)
• Release Years: 1968 – Present

Planet of the Apes was a very original sci-fi movie, co-written by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling and adapted from the novel by Pierre Boulle. It tells the story of astronauts who believe they’ve landed on an unfamiliar planet ruled by apes, but then come to find out that they’ve been on Earth the entire time, with the iconic reveal of the Statue of Liberty.

After the first movie, Planet of the Apes received four sequels, which were not as revered, and then Tim Burton made a Mark Wahlberg-led Apes movie in 2001, which was also met with terrible reviews. Ten years later, Rise of the Planet of the Apes came to fruition, and now a fourth sequel is being developed at Disney to follow up 2024’s Oscar-nominated Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

3

James Bond

27+ Movies And 63+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99% (Goldfinger)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 36% (A View to Kill)
• Release Years: 1962 – Present

James Bond is an iconic franchise that you can’t just Live and Let Die (reference pun intended) and is also one like Alien, Predator, and Star Wars with a lot of notable video game launches in its history. Based on the spy novels by Ian Fleming, this series is truly like the Doctor Who of cinema. After every couple of sets of films and each new era of Bond, you have a new actor playing 007.

Sean Connery played the original, followed by David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and then finally, Daniel Craig in the 2000s-2020s run. There are so many iconic moments, villains, and lines from the Bond franchise, like “Shaken, not stirred” and, of course, “My name is Bond, James Bond.”

2

Godzilla And King Kong

51+ Movies And 70 – 90+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100% (Godzilla vs. Destoroyah), 99% (Godzilla Minus One), 97% (King Kong 1933)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 20% (Godzilla 1998), 8% (King Kong Lives)
• Release Years: 1933, 1954 – Present

Godzilla and King Kong are now stronger together with the ever-expanding Warner Bros. Monsterverse, but they’ve both had quite a long run in the film industry. Just as recently as 2023 and 2024, you had Godzilla Minus One from Takashi Yamazaki and Toho Studios, which won the Oscar for Best VFX, as well as Warner Bros. releasing The New Empire.

Godzilla began in 1954 by the legendary Ishiro Honda, and over the decades, Godzilla received many fierce variants and fought incredible Kaiju monsters. King Kong was made in 1933 and was an important piece of American cinema, with Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake winning Oscars. 2014’s Godzilla and 2017’s Skull Island picked things back up, and the duo has continued to dominate cinemas ever since.

The first-ever on-screen collaboration between Godzilla and King Kong came in 1962 with King Kong vs. Godzilla.

The next installment of the Warner Bros. Monsterverse saga will be titled Godzilla x Kong: Supernova and will release in 2027.

1

Universal Monsters

50+ Movies And 110+ Years

• Highest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98% (Bride of Frankenstein)
• Lowest Rotten Tomatoes Score: 13% (Revenge of the Creature)
• Release Years: 1913 – Present

The longest-ever series is the over-100-year-old Universal Monsters. Even in the early days of silent films, Universal jumped at the opportunity to adapt Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913. And then came the reign of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s classics – The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man.

The Monsters Universe has only been expanded with new remakes in the decades since, with The Mummy seeing the iconic 1999 version with Brendan Fraser, and Dracula seeing numerous modern reimaginings, including 2014’s Dracula Untold and 2023’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter. The Invisible Man and Wolf Man were also both terrifically reimagined by Leigh Whannell and Blumhouse.