toddly6666

To figure out the biggest money-making movies ever made with regards to inflation, are they counting the amount of tickets sold?

Which movie has sold the most amount of tickets? Is there a list for that somewhere online (unless that's the one and the same list for the Top Movies Ever Made with regards to Inflation).

RichC2

Some go off pure money made, others off tickets sold x avg. cost of tickets.

No idea, since whose to say a movie didn't do poorly in regular release and then clean house in $1 theaters. Or whatever.

Similarly, Disney releases get boosted by their initial screenings being $50/ticket "events".

Hokeyboy

OK. We've had this discussion here on the forums dozens of times. You can't compare movies in the 1930s to movies in the 2000s because 70 years ago there weren't any other options for movie-watching EXCEPT to go to the theater. No home video, no DVDs, no BluRays, no cable, no satelite, no Internet, no television -- not a damn thing.

So yeah, people saw Snow White and Gone With The Wind a zillion times because if you didn't seem them in theaters, you didn't see them AT ALL.

If you want to see what movies made the most MONEY, go with box office gross and adjust for inflation. You can find that list all over the Internet. It's pretty much the most objective way to see how much money a film made.

Ash Ketchum

And let's not forget to add in how many people watched a popular movie on television (esp. when WIZARD OF OZ started its annual TV broadcasts around 1957). Can't forget to factor in those Nielsen ratings. And, later, sales on video, LD and DVD. How many tapes of LITTLE MERMAID, LAND BEFORE TIME, and ALADDIN did you kiddies wear out growing up? Gotta count those.

wendersfan

This. Although I have to ask why someone would even care?

Ginwen

I just like looking at the total dollars, dollars adjusted for inflation, and/or tickets sold.

If you're going to factor in things like people waiting and seeing the DVD, then you might as well factor in how many people there were (per capita viewing), and while you're at it throw in how many people were within two hours of a theater when it came out

toddly6666

Did people actually do that in the old days? Was there a similar amount of DVD buyers (people that watch the same movies over and over) versus someone from the 1930s that would go see the same film over and over in the theater? Movie tickets were cheaper back in the old days so even if someone did see the same film over and over in the theater, it could be similar to someone in present time seeing a movie and then buying the dvd to watch it over and over.

So is there a website that has a list of Top Movies just based on # of tickets sold?

Hokeyboy

Do "the old days" include the 70s and early 80s? I'm 39, I was 6 when Star Wars came out in 1977. I probably saw it in theaters close to about 15-20 times between 1977 and 1980, and that wasn't exactly unheard of. Very few people had VCRs and/or cable TV then (my family didn't have a VCR until 1982 and cable came in 1983), and the film itself wasn't available on Home Video until the mid/late 80s. So unless you wanted to wait for the film to appear on TV, you saw it in theaters. In initial release, re-release, double-features, etc.

The big hit movies were seen a lot. The summer of 1981 I probably saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and Clash of the Titans 3-4 times each, probably more. 1982 I practically lived at the movies. Stuff like Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Jaws, the Star Wars/Indiana Jones flicks, Ghostbusters, E.T., people just went to go see them again and again.

And that's when we had network TV too! Ahhh the ABC Sunday Night Movie... was there NOTHING it couldn't do? *sighs wistfully, reminisces about the Good Ole Days, spoons Ovaltine into face directly, pees on a turtle*

wendersfan

I was 14 when it came out, and in spite of not even liking the movie much at all, saw it four times that summer. There wasn't a whole lot else to do, and it beat watching NBC, CBS, or ABC.

Hokeyboy

Yeah I can't remember the last movie I saw more than once in theaters... even movies I really liked.

No wait I saw "The Dark Knight" twice", but only to see it in IMAX the 2nd time.

rw2516

When I was a kid in the sixties adult prices were .75 and kids under 12 were always free with an adult. If you were to take butts in seats + butts in car seats at drive-ins X today's ticket prices, there would be a few dozen 2 billion and over grossing movies at least from the 70s and back.

Ash Ketchum

If I had to base popular movies on anecdotal evidence, I'd say I know far more people who saw WEST SIDE STORY than I know people who saw THE DARK KNIGHT, TITANIC or AVATAR. And we used to go see WEST SIDE STORY over and over and over again. And this was when children's prices were 50 cents or 75 cents a ticket. At some point I was too old to pay children's prices, but adult prices at the neighborhood theaters were no more than $1 or $1.50 a ticket. I think I saw it in theaters 23 times before it came on TV. And then we ALL watched it on TV. Practically everybody I knew watched it when it came on TV. And then, decades later, I got it on VHS and showed it to my daughter, nieces and nephews. How do you measure the popularity of a film like that vs. boxoffice grosses for current films?