So what is the longest film series ever? It all depends on how and what you count. Do you count only English-speaking films? Or do you throw in a least a few foreign-made films? Do you fully consider all foreign-made and foreign-language films? What about series that have at least some entries that are direct-to-video? And how do you define a film series vs a film franchise anyway? And how do you define “longest”? Is longest defined by theĀ number of films or in minutes of running time?
Whew. This all sounds very complicated, so let’s start by boiling all this down to three facts:
- The longest film series ever is the Wong Fei Hung series, at 89 films.
- There are many very long movie series that you have never head of – since they are old, not recorded in English, or both.
- Wikipedia has a large list of film series, if you want to learn more.
Ok – the basic facts are out of the way now. What are the longest film series that you might actually want to watch, and have a decent chance of actually getting your hands on? I’ve put together my top twenty long film series list below and sorted it by total runtime (not the number of movies).
The result was interesting. Despite having 28 films, Godzilla is not the king of the movie marathon as I’ve previously reported! It’s actually James Bond, who has a 6 hour lead over Godzilla. In the nerd wars, Star Trek handily beats both Harry Potter and Star Wars, with time to spare.
Did I leave some film series out? Definitely. But the real question is: did I leave out any series you might actually want to watch from beginning to end? Comment if I did!
The Longest Film Series You Actually Want to Watch
Film Series | Movies | Hours |
James Bond | 24 | 50.6 |
Godzilla | 29 | 44.3 |
Star Trek | 13 | 25.3 |
X-Men | 10 | 21 |
Harry Potter | 8 | 20.0 |
Batman | 8 | 19.0 |
Pink Panther | 11 | 18.6 |
Friday the 13th | 12 | 18.4 |
The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit | 6 | 17.2 |
Planet of the Apes | 9 | 16.3 |
Fast & Furious | 8 | 16 |
Halloween | 10 | 15.7 |
Star Wars | 7 | 15.5 |
A Nightmare on Elm Street | 9 | 14.2 |
Superman | 6 | 13.0 |
The Muppets | 8 | 12.9 |
Saw | 7 | 11.2 |
Rocky | 6 | 10.7 |
Police Academy | 7 | 10.5 |
Night of the Living Dead | 6 | 9.9 |