10 Most Successful Musical Films of All Time

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If you’re having trouble choosing a good movie to watch in the musical genre, the 10 most successful musical films of all time will certainly provide some good ideas.

Music breathes life into a movie, and in the case of a musical, it plays an extremely significant role in the film’s success. As the character breaks into song, so does the audience, tapping their feet along with the performers on the big screen. The experience that a musical film brings is like no other.

Some musical artists also dabble in this genre of movies, using their talents as singers to enhance the value of a musical film. For instance, Elvis Presley, one of the 10 most successful musical artists of all time, in addition to his thriving music career, acted in a number of musicals as well, Jailhouse Rock being the most well-known.

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The success of a movie these days is measured by the amount of money it brings into the box office. We, however, did not use that as a basis to compile our list, for if we did, all time classics like Singin’ in the Rain and West Side Story would be excluded, and frankly, that would just be blasphemy in the eyes of a film enthusiast. So we decided to rank the movies a little bit differently. We took Moviefone’s 50 best movie musicals ever made (live action only) as our starting point and arranged them using three criteria: the critic rating and the audience rating as per Rotten Tomatoes, and the number of award nominations received by each movie. We only considered nominations from major forums though, namely the Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards. Combining the ranking as per all three criteria, we came up with the following list of 10 most successful musical films of all time. In case of a tie, we gave preference to the critic score.

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