my friends and i were discussing the box office sales of lord of the rings versus the original star wars trilogy. its 1.06mil for star wars and 1.03mil for lotr. but for star wars this includes the re-release sales from the 90s. is there any way to find out what the box office sales for the rerelease was?

Sure.

Star War SE: 138 million
Empire SE: 57.6
RoTJ: 45.5 million.

International numbers for each were pretty close to their domestic takes (Star Wars was more like 119 though).

Keep in mind that the original trilogy was released eons ago. The 322 million initial gross of Star Wars would be something like 500 or 600 million dollars today, if not more.

I think it was a little higher than 1.03-1.06 million. You do mean billion, right?

thanks for the help. of course i meant billion, i was just trying to see if anyone noticed, uh, yeah...right.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/

Everything you need to know...

It's difficult to compare, because the ticket price disparity between the times they were released, is huge.

But dometically, Star Wars, ESB, and ROTJ made about 1.06 billion combined. LOTR made 1.03 billion combined. Comparing worldwide figures between the two would be even more difficult, because worldwide releases back in the late 70s and early 80s doesn't compare to today's worldwide releases.

Domestically, when adjusted for inflation, the original trilogy pulled in 2.315 billion. LOTR adjusted pulled in 1.085 billion.

Yup. the adjust will get you in the end and the worldiwde figures will be apples and oranges.

#1 movie of all time is still Gone With the Wind, based on adjusted ticket and video sales. (It's true EW said so!)

I think that is just ticket sales. I think I remember reading that after inflation, Star Wars was still up there as well as ET. But GWTW had many more millions of people go see it than any of these movies. I doubt the Shreks and Titanics of the past few years would even crack the top 20 when adjusted.

Anyone have a current list? The one I remember reading was from a few years back.

Adjusting for inflation is such an imprecise measurement. I've always felt that a film's success should be quantified by the number of paid admissions. Anyone know of a website with those figures?

Adjusted for inflation is, in most respects, a good calculation of number of admissions. It's probably the best way to figure something like that out.