Summertime is the season of the sequels and 2012 has been no different.
The Avengers, Men in Black 3, Prometheus and Madagascar 3 are all currently in theaters and continuations of widely successful franchises; the eagerly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spiderman will hit theaters in the next few weeks.
The Atlantic Magazine has compiled an updated version of their list of 50 greatest movie franchises based on box office figures and reception by critics. The Avengers rounded out the top 10, thanks to the success of the movies that follow some of the individual superheroes and the record setting movie that followed the whole group, which has been named the third-highest grossing movie of all time.
The franchises that produced Men in Black 3 (#30), The Dark Knight Rises (#13) and The Amazing Spiderman (#3) also made the list. The list also includes several other box office hit series, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, X-Men and Indiana Jones, which scored the top spot as the best franchise of all time.