Hollywood All-time, World-Wide Box Office Hits?
An early draft of my third ToastMasters speech, given on May 24, 2011.
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It's Monday morning and I'm driving into work. Turn the radio. The air is filled with the news from the weekend. Top news in entertainment? The weekend's big box office hit.
"The mighty Thor annihilated the box office this weekend and sits at No 1 movie of 2011 after only 3 weekends!"
Then they start comparing it to Avatar, the number one grossing moving of all time having earned in the realm of $2.8B.
Sounds mighty impressive. Maybe I'll go watch it this weekend.
I tune back into the news.
A guy in Tennessee gets arrested and fined for downloading pirated movies.
Netflix makes headlines, as it now dominates streaming internet traffic. That story goes onto say that people are staying home more, rather than going to the movies, to save their wallets. The average movie ticket costs around $14 in Philadelphia. So a family of four will spend $56 just to sit in quasi comfortable chairs littered with popcorn and maybe wet from the previous person's spilled soda.
Maybe I'll just wait for Thor to come out on DVD.
But that gets me wondering about that top grossing movies list.
A quick Google search and I find a list a top grossing movies of all time.
1. Avatar in 2009 at $2.8B
2. Titanic in 1997 at $1.8B
3. Lord of the Rings, Return of the King in 2003 at $1.2B
Scrolling through the list, I notice that of the top 25 movies, only 3 movies were made before 1999. All other movies came out after Y2K.
These movies were pretty good. But they're not great movies. But wait. Hmm. Something just doesn't add up. How are these movies bringing in these gross earnings?
Inflation.
As I said earlier, the average cost of a 2-D movie ticket is now $14. But let's look at the national average which is approximately $8.00. Ten years ago, that cost was $5.50. If I did my mental math correctly, that's a 45% difference. 45%!!! This is not an accurate historical representation of which movies were most popular.
I continued to research. I found a chart based on data from boxofficemojo.com that ranks films using figures adjusted for ticket-price inflation, based on total box-office receipts.
Where are our top three movies?
Avatar is number 15.
Titanic is number 6. Wow. Impressive.
Lord of The Rings, Return of the King? Number 51.
Quite a different story, isn't it?
You must be wondering what the top movies on this list are. Any guesses?
1. Gone with the Wind, 1939.
It sold 202 Million tickets. In 1939, it made $198M. With inflation, do you know how much that is today? That's $1.58Trillion dollars. Can you believe that? To put that into perspective, that's about 11% of the US government's debt as of the weekend.
2. Star Wars, 1977
Sold 178M tickets, $460M
Today: $1.4T.
3. The Sound of Music, 1965
Sold 142M tickets, $158M
Today: $1.1T
The only movie in the top 25 movies made after Y2K is Avatar, ranking at number 14. The Dark Knight in 2008 just missed that cutoff at number 28.
This appears to give a more accurate representation of historically popular movies. But is it really?
Take into consideration that when Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music were released, you could only see it in the theater. My Dad would reminice about the number of times he watched Doctor Zhivago in theaters. "Mom, I'm going to see the Doctor!" he'd say. Nowadays, there are so many options for movie watching. Sure, see it in theater. Or wait to buy the DVD/Blue Ray. Or rent it from RedBox. Or stream it from Netflix. Or buy the bootleg from the guy at the corner. That makes the fact that Dark Knight and Avatar sold as many tickets they did quite an amazing feat.
So, while it's not the end-all-be-all of comparisons, I believe comparing movies buy the number tickets sold is more accurate. Not by gross earnings.
Next Monday, when you're listening to the box-office recap, don't get fooled into thinking that the new Pirates of the Carribbean movie is all that great just because it hammered Thor.
-=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-
It's Monday morning and I'm driving into work. Turn the radio. The air is filled with the news from the weekend. Top news in entertainment? The weekend's big box office hit.
"The mighty Thor annihilated the box office this weekend and sits at No 1 movie of 2011 after only 3 weekends!"
Then they start comparing it to Avatar, the number one grossing moving of all time having earned in the realm of $2.8B.
Sounds mighty impressive. Maybe I'll go watch it this weekend.
I tune back into the news.
A guy in Tennessee gets arrested and fined for downloading pirated movies.
Netflix makes headlines, as it now dominates streaming internet traffic. That story goes onto say that people are staying home more, rather than going to the movies, to save their wallets. The average movie ticket costs around $14 in Philadelphia. So a family of four will spend $56 just to sit in quasi comfortable chairs littered with popcorn and maybe wet from the previous person's spilled soda.
Maybe I'll just wait for Thor to come out on DVD.
But that gets me wondering about that top grossing movies list.
A quick Google search and I find a list a top grossing movies of all time.
1. Avatar in 2009 at $2.8B
2. Titanic in 1997 at $1.8B
3. Lord of the Rings, Return of the King in 2003 at $1.2B
Scrolling through the list, I notice that of the top 25 movies, only 3 movies were made before 1999. All other movies came out after Y2K.
These movies were pretty good. But they're not great movies. But wait. Hmm. Something just doesn't add up. How are these movies bringing in these gross earnings?
Inflation.
As I said earlier, the average cost of a 2-D movie ticket is now $14. But let's look at the national average which is approximately $8.00. Ten years ago, that cost was $5.50. If I did my mental math correctly, that's a 45% difference. 45%!!! This is not an accurate historical representation of which movies were most popular.
I continued to research. I found a chart based on data from boxofficemojo.com that ranks films using figures adjusted for ticket-price inflation, based on total box-office receipts.
Where are our top three movies?
Avatar is number 15.
Titanic is number 6. Wow. Impressive.
Lord of The Rings, Return of the King? Number 51.
Quite a different story, isn't it?
You must be wondering what the top movies on this list are. Any guesses?
1. Gone with the Wind, 1939.
It sold 202 Million tickets. In 1939, it made $198M. With inflation, do you know how much that is today? That's $1.58Trillion dollars. Can you believe that? To put that into perspective, that's about 11% of the US government's debt as of the weekend.
2. Star Wars, 1977
Sold 178M tickets, $460M
Today: $1.4T.
3. The Sound of Music, 1965
Sold 142M tickets, $158M
Today: $1.1T
The only movie in the top 25 movies made after Y2K is Avatar, ranking at number 14. The Dark Knight in 2008 just missed that cutoff at number 28.
This appears to give a more accurate representation of historically popular movies. But is it really?
Take into consideration that when Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music were released, you could only see it in the theater. My Dad would reminice about the number of times he watched Doctor Zhivago in theaters. "Mom, I'm going to see the Doctor!" he'd say. Nowadays, there are so many options for movie watching. Sure, see it in theater. Or wait to buy the DVD/Blue Ray. Or rent it from RedBox. Or stream it from Netflix. Or buy the bootleg from the guy at the corner. That makes the fact that Dark Knight and Avatar sold as many tickets they did quite an amazing feat.
So, while it's not the end-all-be-all of comparisons, I believe comparing movies buy the number tickets sold is more accurate. Not by gross earnings.
Next Monday, when you're listening to the box-office recap, don't get fooled into thinking that the new Pirates of the Carribbean movie is all that great just because it hammered Thor.