I’m always fascinated by movie grosses:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm
I’ve seen 279 of the 300 listed. It’s kind of amazing to think about how many movies I’ve seen in the course of my lifetime.
I’m at 269/300, most of the ones I haven’t seen are from the 50s and 60s. I think back when Netflix was doing ratings I had rated over 2,000 movies, which at the time was something like an average of a movie per week for every week of my life.
Those numbers seem really weird. Like objectively wrong weird.
Ah, I see, domestic only. And their price seems off. For example, adjusting to 2019 they made Avengers Infinity War go from 678 million to 653 million. That… is a nearly 4% drop, when inflation over that same period is over 1%. So how in the hell are they showing a 5% different result than adjusting for inflation?
It seems like they are goosing the numbers deliberately, applying a depreciation value to the last decade, in order to skew results, ignoring actual box office take and using number of ticket sales instead. Which is bonkers. The cost of a ticket has a definite impact on the number of people going. If movie tickets were $1 today, you would get more sales. But total revenue would be, likely, lower. Opportunity cost is a thing. So by using the number of ticket sales, applying a dubious average ticket value formula, and presto! Seems like deliberate chicanery.
While you can say that ultra screen, 3D, and all the other things used to increase ticket price make it unfair to compare direct revenue adjusting for inflation, I think that is ridiculous. The fact that many blockbusters are going to sell a bunch of $14 ultra screen tickets that your art house dramas would never be shown in doesn’t mean that you count the ticket for the blockbuster as monetarially the same.
Plus the increasing importance of international markets does change the math.
I find these types of comparisons interesting, but their methodology is so spectacularly bad in order to achieve a pre ordained result. Bah.
Here’s the page on inflation adjustments:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm
they have avg ticket prices down almost 1% this year. Not sure why however…
Yeah, even still they marked 2017 down too (though prices are up regardless).
Like I said, it’s an idea that’s been pitted around every few years. But the way they massaged their numbers here three red flags. And if you are making domestic only, straight national inflation adjustment seems better. Because the number of people going to see a movie is strongly correlated to the cost. Either give inflation adjusted dollars, or give ticket sales numbers. Don’t give some hokey formula calculating current values based on ticket sales.
153/300 for me.
I am legitimately shocked. I don’t watch that many movies compared to most here. But I’ve seen 228.
Turns out that there are a lot of kids movies, particularly Disney ones, so being a parent scored me a ton.
Apparently I’m a slacker at 221/300.
+1 to the “I’ve seen a lot of Disney movies” thing. Also action movies.
Yeah it was basically all action movies from 1977 forward, kids movies, and war movies for me. There are a smattering of others, but probably a good 80% of my ‘have seen’ for one of those three categories.
The rest are mostly comedies that came out in the 80’s or 90’s and random classics or best picture types (Sound of Music, Gone With the Wind, Ben Hur and the like)
I’m honestly surprised that the top 20 isn’t 50% comic book movies. There is something really off about that list.
That’s the Inflation adjustment, hence the older movies, before blockbusters were blockbusters. They didn’t really make action movies like they do since Jaws.
Part of what I called out above. Their inflation adjustment measures are suspect, at best. Using number of ticket sales and ignoring the actual box office take, especially since the advent of ultra screens and 3D that increase certain types of tickets, seems deliberately designed to depress blockbusters of the last 10 years artificially. And using a curious ‘average ticket price’ as a measure rather than inflation is spurious as well.
Ticket price has an impact on tickets sold. Using a ticket prices rather than actual inflation leads to odd results.
I love that House of Wax grossed more than Jurassic Park: The Lost World.
-xtien
It blows my mind that a movie from 1939 made 200 Mil in 1939 dollars. 200 million in today’s dollars is still a pretty decent make.
While I get the sentiment, it really didn’t.
It’s their price adjustment schema, designed to over inflate older while deflating newer. Mostly. Some cases, particularly pre WWII it actually under inflates
However this one may be complicated significantly due to releases from other years.
Move it forward 5 years and it goes from 3.6 to 2.8 mil. So without a per year breakdown this may be under counted, or it made the bulk of its profits in the 50’s or later (pure inflation is almost an exact match for 1955)
Anyhow, I’ll stop. Sorry for beating that drum to death, but these numbers just really bothered me in their methodology.
Actually, I don’t think you’re beating a drum to death. I find that really interesting. Good post.
-xtien
Well , I’m one who did see Gone with the Wind in the theaters during a rerelease.
And I suspect that Rocky Horror is all sorts of different ticket prices.
It’s not just that, though. Movie attendance in the old days before widespread TV (and videos and internet etc) was enormous.
That also amazes me. It doesn’t surprise me, because I’m well aware of all the different ways we can consume media these days, not to mention all of the other cool entertainment we can partake in which aren’t connected to movies. But I still can’t help but be amazed by those numbers. Thank goodness we don’t live in an age where we almost literally had no options but to go to a movie theater.
Are all those old Disney animated movies worth watching today? Fantasia, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan?