I always wonder if inflation is taken in account when they say “it’s the first movie since titanic that makes so much money”… “it’s the highes grossing movie ever” and then every year there is a highest grossing movie… but money is worth less than 60 years ago, so my question is: is it really the highest grossing movie? Is it?
In: Economics
No if you go by total number of tickets sold no movie has ever beaten the 1939 classic *Gone with the Wind.*
Though, it’s hard to compare exactly, back then movies were cheap enough that people were happily watching a movie multiple times, and noone had Netflix or a DVD player to watch something without going to a theatre, so direct comparisions of success are pretty much impossible.
there are charts that take inflation into acount, but no movie comes close to “Gone with the wind”(1939, 4.3 Billion in todays money). the runner ups are avatar, titanic, star wars and endgame, all grossing 3.something.
Not taking inflation into acount is usually just pr.
It’s never about the statistics, although inflation makes counting money harder..
It’s usually just a marketing stunt…
It’s basically “it is successful, so you want to see it too”
It’s not about leaderboards and such
Here you go. Highest grossing films of all time, adjusted for inflation.
Gone with the Wind $4.3 billion
Avatar
Titanic
Star Wars
Avengers: Endgame
The Sound of Music
E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial
The Ten Commandments
Doctor Zhivago
Star Wars: The Force Awakens $2.6 billion
So, no, modern totals aren’t a patch on the classic audience. It’s unlikely that any film will ever get close to Gone With The Wind so it’s completely understandable that films get hyped for how they do in up to date money. It speaks, albeit with forked tongue, of success.
As a counterpoint to these other comments, yes, the existence of currency devaluation doesn’t change the definition of the word gross. You can manipulate data to make any point you want, but highest grossing is highest grossing. Inflation is a factor, but ranking films by inflation adjusted box office is just as much cherry-picking as any other metric. If inflation were so instrumental and central to the financial performance of modern blockbusters, then why doesn’t every new theatrical release eclipse the box office of decades old films? That is clearly not the case, so there must be other contributing factors. Solely looking at adjusted grosses wrongly assumes purchasing power rises commensurately with inflation and ticket pricing. Minimum wage in the US hasn’t changed in 15 years, has there been no inflation in the last 15 years? Inflation adjusted gross also ignores alternative formats, purchasing power, industry changes in how grosses are split between the distributor and the exhibitor, the advent of television, internet, cable, home video, streaming, piracy, etc.
People generally consider Gone with the Wind to be the highest grossing film, inflation adjusted, but how useful is it to compare a film with seven theatrical releases across 80+ years to a modern film? Should you only compare the inflation adjusted grosses of Avatar since 2009 against Gone with the Wind’s inflation adjusted box office from 1940 to 1955? In the 40s, people might go to the theater just for the air conditioning, so a 4-hour runtime was a great value proposition in that regard. Is that even worth considering? Probably not, as there’s really no end to this thought exercise. Unadjusted gross is a simple metric to evaluate relative performance, and it’s as useful a success indicator as anything else.
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