

Avatar still only #26 when box office receipts are adjusted for inflation - JacobAldridge
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

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axiom
I've always wondered, even after adjusting for inflation wouldn't it make
sense to adjust for population as well?

In 1939 the population of the US was only 130millon, and a large portion was
rural, which meant they had poorer access to theaters. This makes the returns
of Gone with the Wind that much more impressive (although of course TVs/misc.
entertainment devices didn't exist, which compete against movies.)

Perhaps a good way to measure the success a of a movie would be the percentage
of the population that has seen it.

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karzeem
If you're the movie studio, revenue is your concern, so then it only really
makes sense to adjust for inflation.

But yeah, if you want to gauge the popularity of the movie, the best measure
is probably something along the lines of tickets sold per capita.

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Towle_
> if you want to gauge the popularity of the movie, the best measure is
> probably something along the lines of tickets sold per capita.

Not really. 1946 tickets per capita in the US: 34. 2004: 5.

There's no way to do this right. Box office "records" don't mean anything, no
matter how many variables you take into account.

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zck
This doesn't account for the fact that Avatar on 3D IMAX costs more than an
average movie. They're using $7.35 as the ticket price, not the $17 I've seen
as the actual price. From the article: "Inflation-adjustment is mostly done by
multiplying estimated admissions by the latest average ticket price."

~~~
abossy
How many 3D IMAXes are out there, though? My bet is that a majority of viewers
are watching it in 2D _in the U.S. alone._ This list doesn't account for
international sales, which probably attributes for a smaller overall
percentage of 3D ticket sales.

~~~
xiaoma
>* This list doesn't account for international sales, which probably
attributes for a smaller overall percentage of 3D ticket sales.*

Why? Everybody I know here in Taipei who saw it saw it in 3D. Is 3D
exceptionally popular in the US or something?

~~~
GFischer
Here in Uruguay too... it was the main selling point for 3D cinemas.

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ynniv
Its a little weird that the top estimate, when derived via their dropdown for
its actual year, is off by 4x:

    
    
      Gone with the Wind: unadjusted in 1939:  $198,676,459
                          "adjusted" for 1939: $ 46,470,300
    

Makes me not trust their "adjusted" for 2010.

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zck
That's because they have to reduce the price of any ticket sales beyond 1939.
Note that the year has a carat next to it, indicating "documented multiple
theatrical releases. Most of the pre-1980 movies listed on this chart had
multiple undocumentented releases over the years. The year shown is the first
year of release."

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redcap
Note that this is only domestic US grosses.

As a matter of personal preference I'm more interested in worldwide grosses.

(Not a US citizen)

~~~
seldo
Worldwide it became (as of today) the highest-grossing movie of all time:

<http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/>

However, inflation-adjustment is harder for the worldwide figure since
inflation varies by country and you'd need to know the individual grosses for
each one. [Edit: actually, is that true if the figures are in USD?]

~~~
houseabsolute
Depends on how the conversion is done. If they take the numbers in all
countries in a particular year, convert them to USD at the rate applicable in
that year, inflation adjust that number, then add them together, the result
you get is roughly good for inflation adjusted worldwide gross. Other methods
may be less valid.

~~~
kend0g187
Taking the top movies in adjusted domestic gross, dividing by their non-
adjusted domestic gross, and then multiplying that ratio by their worldwide
gross, you get:

1\. Gone with the Wind - $3.04 billion 2\. Titanic - $2.34 billion 3\. A New
Hope - $2.24 billion 4\. E.T. - $1.93 billion 5\. The Sound of Music - $1.92
billion 6\. Jaws - $1.73 billion

As of this post, Avatar is 2.05 billion and climbing. Will it be the most
watched movie of all time worldwide (in theaters), or will Gone with the Wind
retain its dominance? *Data taken from boxofficemojo.com.

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brianchesky
Keep in mind this list is only for domestic. While many films on this list
came out before international distribution, Avatar has been particularly
successful internationally.

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necubi
These sorts of comparisons are kind of silly, because there is no way to
adequately put all these movies on equal ground (the movie market is radically
different today than it was in the 1930s). Even if one could, what exactly are
they trying to show? Relative popularity? There are better measures that do
not include grosses.

The biggest issue though with comparing a movie that came out a month ago with
a movie that came out 80 years ago is that movie has had 80 years of releases
and re-releases in which to make that sum. It would be much more fair to
compare everything to how it did in the first month of availability (though
even then you have problems with judging how widely distributed a movie was
initially). Also, the site doesn't make clear if, when taking into account re-
releases, they adjust everything at the price level of the original release or
if they judge each re-release at the new price level.

In the end, though, any sort of historical comparison is a silly exercise that
tells us little.

~~~
iclelland
The site makes it very clear, actually, that they adjust ticket sales in each
year independently, based on the year that the tickets were sold.
<http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm> goes into all of the details.

That being said, I don't know how much their calculations should be trusted,
as they claim to use $7.35 as the ticket price for 2009 as well as 2010, but
show Avatar's 562MM as adjusted up from 555MM starting in 2009 dollars.

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ComputerGuru
Thank you. I've been trying to convince people that inflation really makes the
current ranking quite useless; plus that Titanic was released at a time when
people didn't go to the cinema as much as today.

But of course, many people won't believe something just because it's not in
print.

~~~
jstevens85
"plus that Titanic was released at a time when people didn't go to the cinema
as much as today."

My guess is that the opposite is true. Large LCD and plasma screens with 5.1
Surround Sound and DVD/Bluray make cinema less attractive than what it was 12
years ago.

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waterlesscloud
A billion dollars of profit is still a billion dollars of profit. Adjust all
ya want.

~~~
noilly
the film studios only see part of (I've heard ~50%) gross box office when
taking theater operator's share out (+ cost to manufacture and distribute film
reels, etc). Plus Avatar cost >300 million to produce + >100 million marketing
+ James Cameron's share, etc. Film studios make most of the profit from
accounting/tax tricks, dvd revenue, tv deals, etc.

~~~
waterlesscloud
It's a sliding scale of box office gross that goes to the studios. Believe it
or not, each film has its own deal, and there isn't really a standard amount.
Bigger films can negotiate more for the distributor (studio) and less for the
exhibitor (theater). The typical pattern is that the first weekend or two is
very heavily slanted towards the distributor (as much as a 85/15 split, though
70/30 is more normal). Then the distributor's share goes down each weekend.

The rule of thumb is that over the course of a typical film, the distributor
will receive about 55% of box office gross. Foreign deals can differ a fair
amount.

Each deal is different, and it's hard to say what any one film gets without
some insider info.

Then there's the cost of the film. There's not been a firm number on Avatar's
production costs. High 200s is a good guess, but it's a guess.

P&A (prints and advertising) can be a huge cost on something like Avatar,
though it had fewer prints than a typical blockbuster. Advertising was
certainly substantial, though. I suspect 100 million is actually low.

Cameron's share is likely defined to come after some sort of breakeven point,
some minimum number the studio beancounters said had to come back to the
studio. There's really no standard whatsoever for someone like Cameron though,
so who knows.

It's also important to remember that a lot of a film's production cost is
really just the studio paying itself. Soundstage rental. Grip trucks,
costuming, blah blah blah. Money moving from one column to another.

Avatar probably didn't qualify for any tax credits, though some films get
really amazing deals. Some come close to having half their budgets in
transferable tax credits, depending on the state or locale they shoot in.
Those tax credits can be sold for cash and can considerably lower the cost to
a studio.

The traditional hope for an average film has been to break even on box office,
profit on the ancillaries - dvd, tv, etc. But with DVD sales dropping, that
model will need some adjustment.

Avatar, though, is probably pretty close to some definition of profit in
theatrical release.

And all that billion plus dollars is cash flow. Which is king, as much in
Hollywood as it is anywhere else.

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jpcx01
Useless indicator without counting in international returns. Money is money,
no matter which country it comes in from.

Still, it has to do about 30% better than Titanic (which did well overseas),
so it has a ways to go.

