Tired of hearing about record-breaking movies

[ngkf7]

To begin, this is no way to say that Dark Knight doesn't deserve a place in history, or even Titanic for that matter.

My problem these days is that all of these news articles constantly being written about what movie broke which $ record. Sure Dark Knight has made tons of money, but if you look at it from a true economic standpoint, it's crap when you factor in rising costs of ticket prices and more importantly, inflation.

To begin, Titanic made almost $601 million at the box office. That was 1997. Today that would be almost $787 million. That's just dollar inflation. Ticket price inflation puts it over $900 million.

Now take an old classic like Gone With The Wind. It made over $198 million in its box office releases. Adjust that for monetary inflation and it's over $2 billion. Ticket price inflation puts it around $1.43 billion.


Check out http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm and look, TDK, while far better than a lot of movies on the list, has barely broken the top 50 when ticket price inflation is taken into account. The original Batman has theoretically brought in more.

I do hope TDK breaks more records, but I'm sick of the media and other people talking about how much money movies are making these days. Sure it's a ton, and it definitely is an amazing feat (especially given current economic woes), but still, there are so many other movies out there that did extremely well in their respective years too.

[BirdManJr]

Yeah but this is this year...so we talk about record breaking movies that are happening right now....i for one would be bored with talking about gone with the wind....

[Riff Magnum]

I started a thread not 10 minutes ago that asks the same questions about inflation and box office gross. Please give me your opinions.

[ngkf7]

I would absolutely be bored with talking about Gone With The Wind as well. Same goes for Titanic, which is far more recent, but still, in real dollars, is far ahead of TDK.

TDK is a much better movie than Titanic in my opinion, but hearing all the talk about the "all-time" list without any discussion about fundamental economic principles just gets annoying.

[Pelican170]

You need to focus on the Ticket Sales instead of Sales Dollars...

[Lucy Diamond]

Amen.

Titanic is the #1 highest grossing movie of all time and it blew.
Titanic rose to power in a time when people still gave a shit and stood behhind what they believed in. It was the rise of "girl power" and women were holding business meetings, conventions, slumber parties and whatever other excuse to see that movie over and over and over again.

Dirty Dancing had a similar following. There are people (mostly women) who have seen that movie WELLLLLLL over 100 times in the theaters alone.

Dollar amounts mean nothing.

Now...for the slow kid in the back of the class who doesn't get me, corrects spelling and generally...well...just doesn't get it.... I am not saying that any of the above mentioned are bad...I'm just saying Titanic was "put over" (you might need to look that one up) by a certain demographic and that is fine.

It just doesn't make the numbers church, priest or tabernacle.
(good luck with that one.)

Later all.

Enjoy whatever movie you are into and don't worry about the numbers.

Op....right on!!

[Lucy Diamond]

Originally Posted by BirdManJr

Yeah but this is this year...so we talk about record breaking movies that are happening right now....i for one would be bored with talking about gone with the wind....

Dude!!!

You need to take a closer look at that chick getting pitched to hell and taking that spill off her horse!!!

I still play that in slow motion.

Always gets a laugh

[ngkf7]

I just posted this in another thread, the one that Riff made, but here it is again:


People need to hear about money, that's what's interesting. Because then they can talk about how much it offsets the millions it takes to film and produce a movie. However, when talking about the money, people need to factor in things like inflation and skyrocketing ticket costs.

Let's assume the average ticket price in the US was $0.75 in 1960. with inflation, that puts the average ticket price at the end of 2007 at around 5.28, $1.60 less than NATOs average for 2007. (http://www.natoonline.org/statisticstickets.htm - not the treaty organization)

With so many other mediums these days, ticket sales would definitely be different. But just like the 30's-70's, people who liked a movie saw it multiple times. And don't tell me that Titanic made all its money on single viewers, TDK too.

[Luis_A51]

Its true with those adjustments Gone With the Wind made a hell of a lot more money.

But back in that time, what the hell else was there to do? No video games, no computers/internet, no mainstream home video format, and therefore no piracy.

Not to mention, you can argue that ticket price inflation (since ticket prices seem to be increasing a hell of a lot faster than regular inflation) is detrimental to box office numbers. I would have seen TDK more than once by now if tickets werent $13 a pop here.

And lastly....who cares? The vast majority of people only care about the total the newest movies have brought in. Its fun to discuss, even if it isnt "exactly accurate" to compare pure totals without adjusting for inflation. No magazine is gonna sell with a headline "Gone with the wind still tops all time"

[Count Zero]

Originally Posted by Pelican170

You need to focus on the Ticket Sales instead of Sales Dollars...

The number of ticket sales wouldn't work either, as it would have the same problems as money. Inflation. As the population increases, there will be more people going to movies, and likewise, more movie theaters.

[SS316SRV]

[ngkf7]

US Population 1940 (Gone With The Wind era): 132+ million
US Population 2007 (TDK era): 300+ million

That's more than twice as many people, that could potentially skew ticket sales

[Riff Magnum]

Originally Posted by ngkf7

US Population 1940 (Gone With The Wind era): 132+ million
US Population 2007 (TDK era): 300+ million

That's more than twice as many people, that could potentially skew ticket sales

Like i said in my thread, just divide the number of ticket sales by the number of people in the country at the time of release and you have a nice little percentage.
Whoever is making the argument that there was less to do 60 years ago and that people just had all kinds of leisure time to go to the movies over and over again really needs to clean out the cobwebs. The roads you drive on were not built, the cables you use were not buried, and the bombs we drop were not even thought of. People were worried about no food on the table, droughts, duststorms, and Hitlers stormtroopers marching across Europe. There was and is, still plenty do besides entertaining ourselves.

[fighthefutureofhd]

Originally Posted by SS316SRV

i think your baby would like some cheese to go with that.

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by ngkf7

To begin, this is no way to say that Dark Knight doesn't deserve a place in history, or even Titanic for that matter.

My problem these days is that all of these news articles constantly being written about what movie broke which $ record. Sure Dark Knight has made tons of money, but if you look at it from a true economic standpoint, it's crap when you factor in rising costs of ticket prices and more importantly, inflation.

To begin, Titanic made almost $601 million at the box office. That was 1997. Today that would be almost $787 million. That's just dollar inflation. Ticket price inflation puts it over $900 million.

Now take an old classic like Gone With The Wind. It made over $198 million in its box office releases. Adjust that for monetary inflation and it's over $2 billion. Ticket price inflation puts it around $1.43 billion.


Check out http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm and look, TDK, while far better than a lot of movies on the list, has barely broken the top 50 when ticket price inflation is taken into account. The original Batman has theoretically brought in more.

I do hope TDK breaks more records, but I'm sick of the media and other people talking about how much money movies are making these days. Sure it's a ton, and it definitely is an amazing feat (especially given current economic woes), but still, there are so many other movies out there that did extremely well in their respective years too.

If you want discuss gross adjusted for inflations...lets. TDK is currently behind "The Bells of St Mary", which as everyne knows was a HUGE Blockbuster.

[Devildog151]

Ok, If you want to put it that way let's take into account gas prices. In 2003 gas was 1.28-1.45 a gallon and what is it now over 4 dollars. I live 32 miles from my closest theater and I know people that said they'll wait until it comes out on dvd because they don't want to spend the gas money. Let me not even look up gas prices when gone with the wind came out. Also you need to take into account with Blu-rays and HDTVs more and more people have dedicated home theaters and with movies only taking three to four months to go from theaters to dvd and blu-ray more people will just wait. I almost did but just had to see it. Before TDK I havent been to the theater in a year. So, basically it all evens out. Get over it already.

[fighthefutureofhd]

i don't think a lot of people had cars back when gone with the wind came out. at least not everyone anyway.

[CptGreedle]

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[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Lucy Diamond

Titanic is the #1 highest grossing movie of all time and it blew.
Titanic rose to power in a time when people still gave a shit and stood behhind what they believed in. It was the rise of "girl power" and women were holding business meetings, conventions, slumber parties and whatever other excuse to see that movie over and over and over again.

Titanic was a movie we literally thought would be gone in two weeks (after a year of disastrous production news, and a kiss-of-death emergency rescheduling from summer, complete with a silly "Look, it's a romance now!" change of marketing, coming in at the slow final death of the Volcano/Big-Meteor mid-90's Disaster trend), and take the studio with it--
Like other surprise mid-90's hits (Qv. "Sixth Sense" making the all-time top ten), it was a movie we were shocked to find out...wasn't as bad as we thought, and half of its first business was people dragging unwilling skeptics to repeat viewings, and those converts dragging skeptics of their own.
Titanic was EVERY box-office weekend #1 from December '97 to April '98, before we could finally slough "Yeah, yeah, okay", and wander over to "Lost in Space" for some fresh commercial meat. (January, February and March can be very long months.)

Return of the King, OTOH, was only king-of-the-mountain for four weeks from December '03 to January '04, and was the opposite:
It was a movie we already knew was good, had enough fans for two weeks of pilgrimage, and got enough of a monolith of good reviews to attract those easily browbeaten mainstream folk who have to wander in to see what the TV news is talking about...

Not that the latter conditions made that movie any less of a list-worthy hit, but think we can put TDK in the latter category--
And I'll disclaimer that I still haven't seen it (too many end-of-summer side trips), so this post is Holy-Fanboy Free.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by EricJ

Titanic was a movie we literally thought would be gone in two weeks (after a year of disastrous production news, and a kiss-of-death emergency rescheduling from summer, complete with a silly "Look, it's a romance now!" change of marketing, coming in at the slow final death of the Volcano/Big-Meteor mid-90's Disaster trend), and take the studio with it--
Like other surprise mid-90's hits (Qv. "Sixth Sense" making the all-time top ten), it was a movie we were shocked to find out...wasn't as bad as we thought, and half of its first business was people dragging unwilling skeptics to repeat viewings, and those converts dragging skeptics of their own.
Titanic was EVERY box-office weekend #1 from December '97 to April '98, before we could finally slough "Yeah, yeah, okay", and wander over to "Lost in Space" for some fresh commercial meat. (January, February and March can be very long months.)

Return of the King, OTOH, was only king-of-the-mountain for four weeks from December '03 to January '04, and was the opposite:
It was a movie we already knew was good, had enough fans for two weeks of pilgrimage, and got enough of a monolith of good reviews to attract those easily browbeaten mainstream folk who have to wander in to see what the TV news is talking about...

Not that the latter conditions made that movie any less of a list-worthy hit, but think we can put TDK in the latter category--
And I'll disclaimer that I still haven't seen it (too many end-of-summer side trips), so this post is Holy-Fanboy Free.

TITANIC in late 97 picked up on what George Lucas learned in Jnauary 97...since Januray - March is pretty much a dumping ground, if you release something of note, audiences will follow. Lucas struck gold with the SW re-releases in early 1997, TITANIC made a mint with the same trick in January 0 March of 1998. There was no competition, and the film was sensational melodrama.

And I have to say -- those of you who discount the success of TITANIC becuase it played to [I quote] "a certain demographic" -- what's the difference between young females flocking to Titanic and young males flocking to The Dark Knight? Should we write off the success of a comic book movie because it skews nerd male instead of skewing twitterpated female?

Personally, I could give a damn what a movie grosses at the box office, and I think it is absurd that the weekend box office grosses (oftentimes incorrect) are reported on the Sunday evening news...I think it is a sickness in the American soul that we judge a film's success based on the money it makes.

But hey, enough of my yackin'. Let's boogie.