All Time Box Office Records

So not a single comment on my previous post. Looks like I'm just talking to myself (but I'm okay with that). Anyways, moving on.

So the news was just released -- Avatar has just eclipsed Titanic to become the highest grossing domestic film of all time. And I think that's great; Avatar is a phenomenal movie. However, there's one tiny little factor in this accolade that no one ever bothers to take into account (and it's the reason I've never been that in awe of Titanic as the "highest grossing movie of all time"), and that is a little thing call ticket price.

Yes, by any standards, Avatar has been hugely successful. But let's not forget that not only did Titanic come out 12 years ago (when ticket prices were several dollars cheaper on average than they are now), but it also didn't have the 3D price bump with it, which is another several dollars per ticket. Now let's jump back even further, to a movie like Star Wars, which came out a full 20 years before Titanic, when ticket prices were even lower!

Here are some statistics to ponder: according to Box Office Mojo (a great site for movie statistics), the average movie ticket price in 1977 (the year Star Wars came out) was $2.23 (which is honestly hard to imagine). The current average ticket price is $7.46. Now in my experience it's an extra $3 for 3D films, making the average price for a ticket to Avatar $10.46. Which means it takes 4.7 Star Wars tickets to bring in the same amount of money as just one Avatar ticket.

So what does all this mean? I would say that while simple grosses are fine for those Hollywood bean counters who only really care about the bottom line, for those of us in the general movie-watching public, who are probably more interested in a movie's popularity (which would be based on tickets sold, as opposed to how much money those tickets made), these box office records are really misleading.

For example, let's look at an old time classic -- Gone with the Wind. On the all-time domestic gross list, it only ranks at #99, so it's barely in the top 100. But this movie came out waaaay back in 1939, when the average price of a movie ticket was only $.39. That's right -- just 39 cents to see a movie! So clearly there's no way this movie could ever compete with a film that's charging over $10 on average per person. Now you adjust Gone with the Wind's domestic gross to current ticket prices, and suddenly IT becomes the highest grossing movie of all time. It's domestic gross, adjusted for ticket price inflation? That would be $1.5 BILLION dollars (and that's DOMESTIC gross). Which means that in terms of ticket sales, Gone with the Wind did at least 2 1/2 times the business that Avatar has done.

For anyone who's curious, you can check out Box Office Mojo's all-time records (they track both domestic and worldwide grosses, plus the adjusted for inflation grosses). Of note is the fact that when you look at the adjusted grosses, Titanic only ranks 6th, and Avatar is still only at 21st (and The Dark Knight, which is ranked 3rd in highest domestic gross, ranks only 28th when ticket price inflation is taken into account).

And so, in summary, while on these records are nice promotional tools for the movie producers, and give the entertainment reporters something to talk about, at the end of the day they all need to be taken with a grain of salt. But that's just my view on things. And thus concludes my rant for the day. :-)