Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
Sorry, this might be a dumb question, but do they adjust that for ticket prices? Titanic came out when they were charging $5 or $6 a movie. Avatar cost me $15 to watch.
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Probably the best measure of a movie, in my opinion, is
ticket sales.
Avatar is #34 all-time in ticket sales. Since this measures only the number of tickets sold and not any dollar amount, it is a better measure IMO.
#34 Avatar has sold 69.6 million tickets.
#6 Titanic sold 128.3 million tickets.
#27 The Dark Knight sold 74.3 million tickets.
#1 Gone With the Wind sold 202 million tickets.
All ticket sales and adjusted grosses are domestic only.
If I had to guess I would say that, by the end of its run, I figure Avatar will probably have sold about 90 million tickets, which would make it #15 all-time.
The problem is that comparing movies from even a decade apart is difficult. The realities of the movie business change a lot. Back when Gone With the Wind was released there were not many movies made and the ones that were good stayed in the theaters for very long periods of time.
Even with Titanic, there were fewer quality releases and thus Titanic was able to remain #1 at the box office for 15 weeks. I would consider that record nigh-unbreakable. Avatar MIGHT be able to pull off 9 or so weeks which is utterly amazing but it has little hope of beating 15 weeks.
At the end of the day I don't think Avatar's accomplishments should be dismissed because the ticket prices are higher now. It will likely make over $2.0 billion dollars and no matter what era you live in, that is amazing.