Top 25 Box-Office Winners (adj for inflation)

[Neroon]

We are always talking about "the top films of all time" with some spin in one direction or the other. Not long ago there was an interesting thread in here comparing a few well-known movie rating services, and what criteria they use. Laying aside discussions on the ever elusive definition of "best", I rather liked this one on IMDB

Box Office Power: All-Time Box Office Winners

It won't settle any arguments, but it's intriguing to see how the grosses compare when adjusted to something resembling a common denominator. What's more, they include some intriguing little bits of trivia with each film. For example, the movie Titanic actually cost more to make than the original ship herself. And before making Star Wars, 20th Century Fox best profit in a single year was $37,000,000. In 1977, when the film came out their profit more than doubled, to $79,000,000.

To coin a phrase .... "fascinating".

 

[PKTrekGirl]

^ That's a most interesting list, Neroon.

As a classic film fan/buff, I am quite pleased to see GWTW in the top spot...and I'm also pleased to see Doctor Zhivago on there as it's one of my 3 favorite movies of all time. Also feel a bit vindicated by that as I think it's a better movie than Lawrence of Arabia...even though Lawrence gets more of a gush factor today as the top David Lean epic.

Not surprised to see alot of Disney movies on there - those things get recycled with each generation of toddlers.

I WAS surprised however, to see both of the two big Paul Newman/Robert Redford teamings on there - both The Sting AND Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made the list.

Very interesting....

 

[Neroon]

I have seen most of the films on that list multiple times. For my money, "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" each have an incredibly high rewatchability factor, among the highest for my taste.

 

[Kira's Mom]

Wow, that's a very interesting list. Not surprised to see GWTW in the top spot.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Fantasia is #6???

Is the total cumulative? I thought Fantasia was a flop when it was released. But a cumulative total gives old movies an unfair advantage.

 

[bigdaddy]

Well didn't The Dark Knight make it to 600 million or something?

 

[trevanian]

can't believe JUNGLE BOOK was so high up. I loved it first run, but unlike things like the Adam West BATMAN theatrical (which stretched three blocks downtown san jose), I don't remember lines for JUNGLE at all.

 

[chrisspringob]

Box Office Mojo is the daddy of box office stats, and they have a rather different ranking of the inflation-adjusted box office list:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

That's the one that is more commonly used in the media, with Star Wars at #2. I'm not sure why there's the discrepancy between the two lists, but it's possible that IMDb just blindly took the release dates for the movies, and then applied the inflation correction, as if the movie made all its money in the initial year of its release. This will tend to inflate the #s for Disney movies and the like, which have been rereleased dozens of times.

Another thing that will inflate the numbers for kids movies is to base things off of admissions and then just use a constant multiplier to convert to dollars, rather than just work exclusively in dollars. That's because ticket prices are lower for kids, so kids movies will generate fewer dollars per person who sees it.

And actually, a third possible source of discrepancy could be between adjusting for inflation using something like the CPI vs. adjusting for inflation in ticket prices only. Over X years, you might have overall prices for everything go up by 50%, while the prices for movie tickets go up by 60%. So it depends on how you define "inflation".

 

[Spot's Meow]

I find it interesting that on the first list, all of the Disney movies listed are the only ones I am not so fond of. I love Disney movies, but ones like 101 Dalmations, Fantasia, The Jungle Book, etc. are easily my least favorites. Go figure.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Well didn't The Dark Knight make it to 600 million or something?

I didn't do any checking, but that figure isn't adjusted for inflation, so it wouldn't probably be in the top 10.