Billion Dollar Movies and Future High Earners

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It doesn’t seem like a major accomplishment for a movie to surpass $1 billion at the box office anymore. Before The Dark Knight was released in the summer of 2008, there were only three movies to reach that milestone: Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Now the list contains ten films.

Avatar – I’m not sure if this comes as a surprise because I had no idea how people would accept a fully computer generated film. I knew the movie would make money because James Cameron had taken a 12 year hiatus from the movie industry in order to work on the film, and it promised a great experience. No one probably expected it to make $2.7 billion worldwide, and no movie will even have a chance of beating it until Avatar 2 is released.

Titanic – I really don’t see why Titanic was so incredibly popular. Everyone knew about the sinking ship, but what made it better than all the movies back in the 1990s? I read in a demographic novel that it was helped by girls who had seen the movie countless times just because of Leonardo DiCaprio, but it still seemed like a random film to be the first to reach $1 billion.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – This one is not a surprise because all of the other films had made close to $1 billion and besides being the last chapter in the series, it was helped by its post conversion to 3D which boosted ticket prices.

Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King – Again, the previous parts had made hefty amounts at the box office and this was the concluding chapter. It was praised by critics and was greatly successful overseas.

The Problem with Adjusting Movie Grosses and Ticket Prices for Inflation

Tweet The adjusted-for-inflation list of box office figures is always said to be the more correct list and the list that should be analyzed when determining the highest grossing movies of all time. To some extent, this is correct, but it also brings about another statistic, which is constantly being used to compare older movies with the newer ones. This statistic is the audience: the number of people who viewed the film during its theatrical release. Each time a new movie grosses a similar amount to its prequel, and today there are many sequels being made, it’s always mentioned that even though their amounts are similar, the sequel had lower attendance due to inflation, and it probably did. However, the numbers are getting more and more ridiculous and the gaps are widening more than they should be. In order to determine the audience figures, ticket prices are adjusted for inflation and divided into the movie’s total gross. According to inflationary statistics, since 2004, money has decreased in value by approximately 26%, and this is the figure they use to estimate the size of the audience. Yet, back in 2004, ticket prices at the nearest theatre to where I live were $13.50, and according to the way average ticket prices are measured, tickets should currently be priced at $17 each; however, they are actually $12.75 each. Instead of inflating by 26%, ticket prices deflated by about 6%. This theatre might be an exception, being the only theatre in North America to see a deflation in its ticket prices. In any case, it’s evident that inflation is rising faster than ticket prices and even though it’s the most reliable statistic to use in determining audiences, it is too flawed. The whole audience category should be disregarded because in the end, it serves little importance to the general public. Producers and studios are concerned about making money, and those figures are accurately reported every single day. The viewers bring in the money, so I understand the desire for studios to analyze the number of viewers, but when a category is as inconsistent as the audience category is, it needn’t be reported to the general public.