As previously reported, James Cameron's Avatar managed to overcome the massive box office record obtained by Cameron's own 1997 blockbuster Titanic and secure its spot as the highest grossing film of all time. Even though its gross is the highest achieved by any film at the worldwide box office, is it really the highest grossing film of all time? As an article over at Yahoo! Movies points out, that may not entirely be the case.
Avatar has several advantages that many films years ago didn't. The main one being that it was also shown in 3D, which is at least an extra $3 a ticket. Ticket prices to conventional movie theaters today are also much more than they were in 1997.
Inflation should also be considered. If ticket prices are adjusted for inflation, Avatar is actually the 26th highest grossing film in the US. Number one would go to the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind with an adjusted gross of $1.5 billion while George Lucas' Star Wars trails slightly with $1.3 billion.
In comparison to Gone With the Wind, movies are released very differently today. The main difference is how many theaters a film is released in. Not to mention Gone With the Wind was re-released in theaters three times (1947, 1954, 1961) while most movies these days don't get an additional run in theaters, let alone three.
The entire article is well worth reading if you follow this sort of thing. It can be read in its entirety here.
As Avatar claimed a seventh week at the top of the box office this past weekend, there's no end of its reign over the box office in sight. Despite Avatar's firm grasp over the box office, it technically still hasn't surpassed Gone With the Wind.
Sources: movies.yahoo.com, imdb.com, comingsoon.net, rottentomatoes.com
Comments
Firstly, Avatar's box office has at most benefited from IMAX pricing in roughly 80% of ticket sales (less, actually, due to less IMAX showings overseas). The IMAX pricing accounts for about a 20% higher cost in those tickets as compared to regular prices, or around 16% of Avatar's total box office take. With Avatar now at (as of today's box office receipts) more than $2.045 billion (likely as high as $2.055 billion or more), that means adjusting the box office downward to subtract the additional costs for IMAX tickets would still put the film's total at almost $1.7 billion. After this coming weekend, the film will still have matched Titanic's all-time worldwide record, then, as the film would have as the film would have to suffer a drop twice what it's had so far to fall short of Titanic's record even if we again reduce the weekly/weekend take to remove the "IMAX factor".
I put no stock in the adjusted-for-inflation issue.
(1.) Avatar's ticket sales are now approaching those of Titanic, especially worldwide, and by the time its run ends it will top the overall ticket sales for Titanic;
(2.) Accounting of ticket sales and prices, domestically and worldwide, in fact is a modern phenomenon, and no records exit to make accurate predictions about such things for the vast majority of film history, meaning all of the estimates of prices for Gone With the Wind are really best-guesses that largely don't have any serious data for all ticket prices and sales; plus, ticket prices vary so much around the world that estimates are imprecise and flawed;
(4.) If it's fair to adjust for inflation, it should be equally fair to account for the fact that nowadays there are hundreds of films released and any film any film must compete with several other popular, big-budget movies, whereas films like Gone With the Wind competed against far less competition;
(5.) Films today face competition from DVDs and online viewing etc whereas older films existed when the only way to see the film was at theaters; a strong case could be made that if we are adjusting for inflation to make claims about which films deserve top honors, we should calculate DVD rentals and sales plus online viewing to add to the total numbers;
(6.) Many of the films listed at the top of "adjusted for inflation" charts had multiple releases over many years, and remained in theaters far longer (nowadays, theaters are likely to pull a film after a certain time to make room for other films in release, which also makes re-releases less likely now), so this is another case for why one could make a strong case for factoring in DVD rentals and sales (rental costs being far cheaper than ticket prices, and purchase price is a one-time cost, so even here there remains inequity compared to ticket pricing for viewership);
(7.) Notice that "adjusted for inflation" relies on domestic gross only, a limitation favoring films that lack global distribution or enjoy only limited foreign box office; if we are to ignore the fact of older films running for years in release and are also taking into account multiple re-releases, it is inconsistent and arbitrary to negate foreign gross and this negation dramatically skews comparisons; a worldwide "adjusted for inflation" comparison would look dramatically different, and any complaints of unfairness would actually be complaints that only arbitrary unfair factors favoring older films can be utilized;
For these reasons, I think "adjusted for inflation" is a very flawed and deceptive way to compare films, and don't think it can be demonstrated as anything approaching a clear, accurate and/or fair method of comparison. I dismiss the notion that "Avatar" or other films aren't "really" the top grossing just because an arbitrary and flawed system of comparison says so.
Technically, "Avatar" could never surpass "Gone With The Wind" during our lifetimes since "GWTW" has a 70 year head start.
Unless, of course, for his next expolit of world shaking proportions, Jim Cameron discovers the secret of eternal life.
PS. "GWTW" was also theatrically re-released in the US in 1967, 1974, and at least once more after that.
GWTW has had 10 releases-1939,1941,1942,1947,1954,1961,1967,1974,1989 and 1998. Between DEC 1939 and MAR 1942 during the 1st and 2nd releases 52 million people paid box office gross of $30m with studio rental returns of $19.5m. Adjusting to 2010 ticket prices gives a gross over 2 years of $388m. In 7 weeks about 65m people have paid $600m to see Avatar. The average ticket price for GWTW was 2-3 times the average of the time. In the 40's about 4 billion movie tickets were purchased each year. For the last decade the average has been about 1.5 billion per year even though the US population has doubled since the 40's
Gee, I wonder how many tickets GWTW or Star Wars sold after only 45 days in release? Probally not even a fraction that AVATAR has sold.
We'll be watching the oscars, cheering and chatting at www.naviblue.com . Go Avatar!
Technically you should add all the money Avatar will make on DVD to its total because Gone With the Wind didn't have one.
Avatar has taken the top spot in highest grossing movies of all time...
10biggest.com/movies.html
And whether that is inflation adjusted or not, it is an impressive feat for sure!
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