IT'S OFFICIAL - TFA is HIGHEST US Domestic Earner of ALL TIME!!!!

[Tulin]

Some time on Monday January 4th, TFA passed Cameron's blue smurf cat movie as THE HIGHEST US MONEY EARNER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

SW is back where it belongs - at THE TOP of the cinematic earning food chain!

At this point, the only thing I can see beating it's grosses is Episode VIII!!!!!

 

[Mach5]

Oh, a box-office thread. Nice.

This is what I posted in the TFA discussion thread:

TFA has now finished its domestic boxoffice sprint, and has begun to settle down (end of holidays, I suppose).

It brought in impressive 90 million in its third weekend, but as of yesterday, it's in a single digit territory (which was expected). It made an estimated 8 million on Monday (18th day of release), which is almost an exact same figure as Avatar's on its 18th day, and it will now be very interesting to follow how well it holds in comparison.

Avatar had mindblowing "legs", and by its 18th day made $360 mil., which was less than half of its total gross (750 mil., not counting the re-releases, which brought in additional 10 mil.). TFA is already at 750 mil. at this point, and still has a shot at breaking 1 billion domestically. It's a bit of a stretch, but not impossible.

Either way, it will certainly set a domestic record that isn't likely to be challenged any time soon.

The "blue smurf cat movie's" domestic "Lifetime gross" (760 mil.) is going down come Wednesday. Its global record of 2.79 billion is, alas, untouchable. To put things in perspective, in South Korea alone Avatar has outgrossed TFA by a factor of 5. In my country that factor is 2.

Personally, I liked Cameron's Pocahontas in space, but honestly, I even liked the SW prequels better. That means AOTC as well.

 

[Tulin]

Where did you get the $US8m for Monday?

BOM has not yet updated and I doubt TFA drops that much from $31m the week before.

 

[Mach5]

Where did you get the $US8m for Monday?

BOM has not yet updated and I doubt TFA drops that much from $31m the week before.

boxofficetheory.com forum has an incredibly reliable insider. He's been dead on so far.

 

[FPAlpha]

Was there any doubt that TFA would break all records? Hell, it broke pre-sale records, basically vaporized them.

 

[Mach5]

Was there any doubt that TFA would break all records? Hell, it broke pre-sale records, basically vaporized them.

Well, after the pre-sale madness, there was no doubt whatsoever.

I just wish it did a little better overseas (especially in my backyard*, where it ended up behind SPECTRE and Minions). It premiers in China in four days, but very few expect it to kill it over there. Asian numbers have been pretty disappointing so far.

*Just to show how tasteless my countrymen are, the two highest grossing movies in 2008 in Croatia were "Sex and the City" and "Mamma Mia", while "Iron Man" finished 28th. In 2015, TFA just barely beat "50 Shades of Grey" for No.3.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Some time on Monday January 4th, TFA passed Cameron's blue smurf cat movie as THE HIGHEST US MONEY EARNER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

SW is back where it belongs - at THE TOP of the cinematic earning food chain!

At this point, the only thing I can see beating it's grosses is Episode VIII!!!!!

I hated Avatar. Its about time its been put in its place.

 

[RandyS]

Until the next flavor of the month, anyway.

They said the same thing about the first Star Wars in 1977, again about Titanic in 1997, and again about Avatar in 2010.

 

[StCoop]

Some time on Monday January 4th, TFA passed Cameron's blue smurf cat movie as THE HIGHEST US MONEY EARNER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

I'm guessing you've never heard of Inflation? Because in Real Terms it's only in 21st place currently.

 

[Mach5]

Some time on Monday January 4th, TFA passed Cameron's blue smurf cat movie as THE HIGHEST US MONEY EARNER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

I'm guessing you've never heard of Inflation? Because in Real Terms it's only in 21st place currently.

If you factor in inflation, then even Avatar is only 14th, while Star Wars ('77) and Gone With The Wind remain completely unreachable.

However, TFA will almost certainly overtake Avatar in that category as well.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

It's tough to beat the big earners prior to VHS became a household acronym. If you really loved a movie, your only real option was to go see it over and over and over at the theatre for as long as it was up. Now people know they'll be a DVD/Blu-Ray release, so even though multiple viewings are still a thing for a lot of people, it's not the "dear God, I have to watch it NOW or it's gone forever!" mentality things like A New Hope was.

So yes, with inflation accounted for, it's going to be extremely hard for any movie to beat the likes of A New Hope or Gone with the Wind.

 

[Magellan]

Not accounting for inflation is like saying that making a hundred million yen is more than 50 million pound sterling. They are just not the same thing.

It still hasn't really gotten ahead of Return of the Jedi. Or apparently even Avatar........yet

So yes, with inflation accounted for, it's going to be extremely hard for any movie to beat the likes of A New Hope or Gone with the Wind.

Yeah but at some point you'd think it would happen. Star Wars had to sell that many tickets when the total population was only 220 million in the US. Gone with the Wind? 130 million.

 

[Kor]

It's tough to beat the big earners prior to VHS became a household acronym. If you really loved a movie, your only real option was to go see it over and over and over at the theatre for as long as it was up. Now people know they'll be a DVD/Blu-Ray release, so even though multiple viewings are still a thing for a lot of people, it's not the "dear God, I have to watch it NOW or it's gone forever!" mentality things like A New Hope was.

So yes, with inflation accounted for, it's going to be extremely hard for any movie to beat the likes of A New Hope or Gone with the Wind.

Still, even if you own it on DVD/Blu-ray, chances are you don't have a fifty-foot screen at home to watch it on.

Kor

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Technically Gone With The Wind is still #1. It's silly to compare grosses when ticket prices were $1 to grosses when they were $10.

I guess it's true that it's harder to get a lot of people watching the same film at the same time now than back then. There are a lot of factors to take into account but 'Tickets sold' controls the controllable variables better than 'Price paid'.

And the idea that the original Star Wars did it with an unknown IP is unthinkable.

 

[Ithekro]

How long was Gone with the Wind in theaters? How long was Star Wars? How many people bootlegged a video camera recording of Star Wars and had it transferred to Betamax in the days before Home Video release? Couldn't do that back in 1939.

 

[TRON JA307020]

How long was Gone with the Wind in theaters? How long was Star Wars? How many people bootlegged a video camera recording of Star Wars and had it transferred to Betamax in the days before Home Video release? Couldn't do that back in 1939.

Yeah but we were at the tail end of the great depression in 39. 20 cents could still be hard to come by for a lot of people. Also the US population was only 130,000,000 compared to about 320,000,000 today.

 

[Ithekro]

Yet more people went to see it several times than say the Wizard of Oz or any of the other films of that year. Though the tickets sold could be from later years as well. How many times was Gone with the Wind reshown during World War II?

 

[FPAlpha]

Was there any doubt that TFA would break all records? Hell, it broke pre-sale records, basically vaporized them.

Well, after the pre-sale madness, there was no doubt whatsoever.

I just wish it did a little better overseas (especially in my backyard*, where it ended up behind SPECTRE and Minions). It premiers in China in four days, but very few expect it to kill it over there. Asian numbers have been pretty disappointing so far.

*Just to show how tasteless my countrymen are, the two highest grossing movies in 2008 in Croatia were "Sex and the City" and "Mamma Mia", while "Iron Man" finished 28th. In 2015, TFA just barely beat "50 Shades of Grey" for No.3.

Which just shows that the female audience, if energized, beats nerd audiences every time. It's just hard to have such movies and make them appealing but if they do box office is guaranteed (i remember the Titanic craze back in the day, that was something).

 

[DWF]

Being the biggest money earning movie is a bit like being the fastest gun in the west, you're only the fastest gun til you get beat. It'll be interesting to see how the other new Star Wars movies do.

 

[Ithekro]

Not exactly related but I seem to recall that at one point Sammy Davis jr. was the fastest draw in Hollywood.