'The Grinch' Is Now The Highest Grossing Christmas Movie Of All-Time

Christmas is over, but Illumination Entertainment's new take on Dr. Seuss' classic story How the Grinch Stole Christmas has proven to have some impressively long legs at the box office. In fact, The Grinch box office has passed the $500 million mark at the global box office, making Universal's holiday hit the highest grossing Christmas movie of all-time.

Variety has The Grinch box office update with the film landing $500,497,753, which is well past Home Alone's worldwide haul of $476,684,675. That's not bad for a movie that only cost $75 million to produce. Following in the footsteps of the Despicable Me sequels and Minions spin-off, The Secret Life of Pets and Sing, this is Illumination Entertainment's sixth film to make over half a billion dollars.

However, even though The Grinch might be the highest grossing Christmas movie of all-time, it will still remain #2 to Home Alone in the United States. In the US, Home Alone made $285,761,243, and as of now The Grinch has a total of $269,779,855 on the domestic charts. Since The Grinch is on the tail-end of its theatrical run, landing $1.1 million from its 17th place on the chart, it's not likely to dethrone Home Alone in the US.

Even though The Grinch has an impressive haul at the box office, it's the third highest grossing animated movie of the year. Incredibles 2 is unsurprisingly on top by a wide margin with a global take of $1.2 billion. And Hotel Transylvania is far behind in second place with $527 million.

As for what contributed to The Grinch's success...that's not entirely clear. Maybe having an animated update of a classic Christmas story just hit all the right notes for families to head out to see the movie through the entire holiday season (and even beyond). Maybe it's the appeal of Illumination Entertainment after having a run of hits. Or maybe Benedict Cumberbatch as The Grinch was just irresistible. Personally, I think the real key to The Grinch's success was the cross-promotion with IHOP. The power of green pancakes is clear.