MOVIEmeter Top 25 Films of 2008

December of every year brings the inevitable year-end lists of movies -- which ones made the most money, which ones were the biggest flops, which ones were the best, which ones were the worst, which ones might get nominated for awards... But very few of these lists tell you what movies people were most thinking about, most interested in, most excited to find out about. It's easy to say which movies grossed the biggest amount, but that doesn't always tell you what movies made the biggest splash in popular culture.

To that end, IMDb presents the MOVIEmeter™ Top 25 Films of 2008, rankings based not upon critical assessments or box-office performance, but the actual search behavior of over 57 million users of IMDb.com. They're the movies that were most often on people's minds, ones they were keen to get information on. It's a mix of box office hits, upcoming films in production, and classic user favorites -- you'll be surprised to see that some of the highest-ranked movies on our site don't come out until next year (or in the case of one movie, 2011), but they're the ones that generated the most heat. And neither dollar amounts nor flashy awards can tell you that definitively.


3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Fans were devastated when this latest installment was bumped from November to July 2009, but the fervor hasn't dampened any, and was only fuelled by Daniel Radcliffe's new Broadway career.

2. Twilight (2008)

That screaming sound you hear is the thousands -- nay, millions -- of fans who waited with bated breath for the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's runaway vampire bestseller.

1. The Dark Knight (2008)

Nothing, however -- iron men, vampires, transformers -- could touch the phenomenon that was The Dark Knight. It would have been a hit on its own, but the untimely death of Heath Ledger (in his last fully-filmed role as The Joker) brought an extra dimension to the movie -- a mix of sadness, fascination, and awe at the power of his performance. Crushing all competition, the film went on to make a mind-blowing $530 million domestic, making it second only to the phenomenon that was Titanic.
Photos | Message Boards | More