Introduction:
I have perfectionist tendencies; consequently, when I approach an issue I tend to obsess about accuracy and, barring an inopportune 4 ½ month hiatus, ever since the release of Marvel’s The Avengers I’ve been almost consumed with this issue about gauging/ranking the true success of movies’ comparable to others.
For me, it all started when I viewed comments (online war, actually) between the two fan bases of Marvel (Avengers franchise) and DC (Batman franchise). I thought I could put out the fire of this wildly popular debate; however, the more I researched this the more I realized how much of a "gray area" this actually is and not just the "black-and-white" as I had thought. Little did I know the labor-intensive research I was about to embark upon; indeed, the content of this article you’re about to consider has been over a year in the making.
Just for the record, let me disclose that I do identify with, and consider myself in, the Marvel fan base and subsequently am biased to Marvel; however, I want to assure my readers that I approached this research project analyzing the data, not with opinion, but with logic/mathematics to arrive at impartial quantifiable numbers. Therefore, I want to share the impartial truths learned, and conclusions reached, since starting this research.
You see at the start of this research journey with the 2012 success of Marvel’s The Avengers, I was burning to know how it measured up with all the blockbusters of the past. At the time I suspected it would have out performed just about any movie due to the realization of the following factor that involves “apples and oranges”: “initial release duration.”
Early on in this research after investigating the domestic “highest performing movies of all time” lists, the very first aspect that caught my attention was the initial release duration; many of these movies had one, two, three, even four-plus years of initial release to accumulate total monetary-gross/tickets-sold compared to Marvel’s The Avengers five months of initial release to accumulate total monetary-gross/tickets-sold. I noticed many internet authors seemed to unfairly overlook a movie’s initial release duration when pointing out its success comparable to another film; in other words, comparing a movie that had an initial release duration of three-plus years back in the day (e.g., Gone With the Wind) with today’s movies’ typical initial release duration of four to five months simply isn’t comparing “apples-to-apples.”
The next major breakthrough came when my intensive research turned up a website owned by a gentleman named Wayne Schmidt (
www.WaynesThisAndThat.com). It is a wealth of information and I found the movie ranking page (
The 20 Most Popular Movies of all Time) to be particularly enlightening especially in regards to a “little” concept that changed the way I would approach this project:
“adjustments.”I was aware of the adjustment for “inflation” charts and in the early stages of what I would later call the aforementioned initial release duration adjustment; however, to my knowledge, Mr. Schmidt is the pioneer of combining the concepts of inflation, “population,” and “per-capita ticket purchasing trends” adjustments (please see Mr. Schmidt’s website for detailed information regarding these three concepts including mathematical examples). After discovering Mr. Schmidt’s work with the three aforementioned adjustments, I started thinking in terms of combining Mr. Schmidt’s work with my adjustment for initial release duration.
After researching his website, I perceived him to be a genuine, sincere, highly intelligent, and deep thinker with really great thoughts about how the world around us works; being that he’s a retired rocket scientist (literally), I truly trust his opinion in this matter and, at the time, decided to start an e-mail dialog to introduce my idea for a fourth adjustment of initial release duration. It was such a great pleasure to correspond with him; he not only validated my initial release duration as a “good criterion” but brought to my attention that the duration adjustment alone left out an important component: “theater counts.”
With theater count becoming the fifth adjustment, I started to realize the overwhelming amount of labor-intensive research this requires; with each new breakthrough I was getting in deeper and deeper. Nevertheless, armed with all the variables to adjust for (i.e., inflation, population, per-capita, initial release duration, and theater count) and with Mr. Schmidt’s permission to use his work with mine, I endeavored to reach for unprecedented levels (to the best of my knowledge) of movie gauging/ranking by setting out to obtain all the data necessary to perform the calculations.
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Methodology:
Logic dictates the success of movies’ should be gauged from the perspective of most common denominator; and applying these five adjustments normalizes all variables in order to gauge any movie’s success comparable to others in the most fair and balanced method of common denominator.
What these adjustments are really doing is using averages and projecting out to proportionate number amounts measured in monetary-gross and tickets-sold, respectively. Subsequently, since I’m comparing other movies to Marvel’s The Avengers, this represents how any movie from any era would perform in the context of 2012’s movie market dynamics including the initial release duration and theater count context of Marvel’s The Avengers.
Before discussing the adjustments any further, I would like to express a few thoughts on two of the core methodologies utilized in this work:
Initial Release (Excluding Re-releases):
Using initial release only common denominator eliminates the problem of variable release instances associated with older movies; this prevents result skewing of films’ having the advantage of “padded” monetary-gross/tickets-sold due to multiple releases (e.g., Gone With the Wind) comparable to newer movies which may never reach, or not yet entering, re-release territory (e.g., Marvel’s The Avengers).
Tickets Sold (Excluding Re-releases):
Let me just say here and now that I firmly believe actual tickets-sold is a better gauge of success than monetary-gross; however, with the little-to-no information out there for someone who believes as I do (i.e., the most accurate bottom line/cold-hard-facts/apples-to-apples gauge of comparing the success of movies’ begins with actual tickets-sold), inefficiently, we are forced to settle for a less accurate method.
Ideally, factoring down to tickets-sold would eliminate the problem of variable ticket price formats such as 2D, 3D, IMAX, premium/matinee, and even inflation (therefore, this would help when comparing movies’ from different years of release).
Unfortunately, it’s my understanding (mainly via online resources) that actual tickets-sold data either does not exist or is incomplete at best; so we’re left with the less accurate but generally accepted standard of dividing the movie’s actual monetary-gross by the average ticket price of the year(s) of its earnings (this is the largest contributing factor for what produces the “Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation “ charts).
Incidentally, variable ticket price format is not a problem exclusive to the more modern day films; much the same way 3D and IMAX skew the results, many older films had what was called “roadshow” engagements that would skew the results on the same scale as today’s film’s variable ticket price formats. And in some specific cases, I might venture to say, may even cancel each other out (e.g., in a comparison of the two following movies: the 3D skew of Avatar to the roadshow skew of Gone With the Wind).
Back to the adjustments, below are brief definitions/facts I’ve discovered on each of the five adjustments concept; some with additional thoughts on the perspectives utilized in this work:
Inflation Adjustment (Excluding Re-releases):
Definition: The normalizing ratio between two different years average ticket price multiplied by the monetary-gross only (not applicable to tickets-sold).
In this case, with the other movies being measured against 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, this adjusts all compared movies to the same 2012 average ticket price of $7.96.
Population Adjustment (Excluding Re-releases):
Definition: The normalizing ratio between two different years domestic box office population count (i.e., United States and Canada) multiplied by the monetary-gross and tickets-sold, respectively.
In this case, with the other movies being measured against 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, this adjusts all compared movies to the same 2012 total North American population count of 349,830,000.
Per-capita Ticket Purchasing Trends Adjustment (Excluding Re-releases):
Definition: The normalizing ratio between two different years tickets-sold per person multiplied by the monetary-gross and tickets-sold, respectively. Intimately linked with the inflation adjustment; mathematically, it would be inaccurate to employ one without the other.
In this case, with the other movies being measured against 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, this adjusts all compared movies to the same 2012 per-capita rate of 3.89 tickets-sold per person.
Perspective: Factoring down to this common denominator alone corrects for so many of the inherent problems associated with comparing movies; as you can read from Mr. Schmidt’s movie ranking page (
The 20 Most Popular Movies of all Time), he points out that, “Social, political, and economic factors influence the number of people willing to pay to go to the movies…” and this adjustment, he continues, “…accounts for all social, economical, and political factors such as the availability of expendable cash, number of theater screens, relative cost of tickets, competition from television, the rapid releases of movies on DVDs, and the improvement of home theater equipment.” I would like to add, other examples would include but are not limited to: competition from the internet and all forms of piracy.
As Mr. Schmidt points out, all of these issues can literally be seen in the numbers; indeed, just glancing through Mr. Schmidt’s data page (
Box Office Data Page) reveals the impact television had on the per-capita rates (the growth of households with television directly coincides with the massive decline of per-capita rates through the years).
Initial Release Duration Adjustment (Excluding Re-releases):
Definition: The normalizing ratio between two different movie’s days of release (within context of each movie’s initial release theatrical lifespan) multiplied by the monetary-gross and tickets-sold, respectively.
In this case, with the other movies being measured against 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, this adjusts all compared movies to the same initial release duration of 154 days as Marvel’s The Avengers.
Perspective: Factoring down to this common denominator eliminates the problem of variable initial release durations (e.g., inherently longer release durations associated with older
movies, inherently longer release duration potentials associated with certain calendar release dates, etc.); this prevents result skewing of films’ having the advantage of a greater exposure to the population via longer initial release durations (therefore, with greater monetary-gross/tickets-sold potential). For example,
Titanic and
Avatar were December releases, therefore, with a built-in potentially longer release duration (287 days and 238 days, respectively).
Furthermore, as briefly mentioned above and according to best data I could find via online research, many older (i.e., pre/circa-home video industry era) movie’s initial release durations were much longer than modern-day counter parts; for example, Stars Wars ended at just under a year and one-half (532 days), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial came in one day short of a full year (364 days), and as previously mentioned, Gone With the Wind was just over three and one-half years (1,295 days). And finally, the longest initial release duration I’ve found to date is The Sound of Music at a whopping four and one-half years (1,643 days)!
Put this into perspective by asking the question: How do you compare a movie that ran 4 ½ years (e.g., The Sound of Music) to a movie that ran 4 ½ months (i.e., typical of most modern-day movies)? Again, I can’t emphasize this enough so I’ll repeat: this is definitely not an apples-to-apples comparison; meanwhile, the answer lies in the initial release duration adjustment. At this point, with the enlightenment of this answer and since I’ve been referring to apples so much, I’ve just got to ask: How do you like them apples [laugh]?
Theater Count Adjustment (Excluding Re-releases):
Definition: The normalizing ratio between two different movie’s average weekly theater count (within context of each movie’s initial release theatrical lifespan) multiplied by the monetary-gross and tickets-sold, respectively. Similar to the inflation/per-capita relationship, intimately linked with the initial release duration adjustment; mathematically, it would be inaccurate to employ one without the other.
In this case, with the other movies being measured against 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers, this adjusts all compared movies to the same average weekly theater count of 1,689 as Marvel’s The Avengers.
Perspective: Factoring down to this common denominator eliminates the problem of variable theater counts (e.g., due to a higher/lower opening theaters count differential, gaining/losing theaters due to lower/higher competition from other movies in the market place, etc.); this prevents result skewing of films’ having the advantage of a greater exposure to the population via higher theater counts (therefore, with greater monetary-gross/tickets-sold potential). For example, on its 20th day in theaters, I observed Man of Steel begin to rapidly lose a massive amount of theaters; presumably, due to the currently competitive market place of summer 2013.
I would like to point out that actually; among theaters, screens,
and showings; the most accurate data set to use for this adjustment would be each movie’s average showings count during initial release. You can’t get any more common denominator than that; however, in an attempt to balance common denominator with best data available between all films, I felt forced to choose the average weekly theater count. This decision was not made lightly and was due to (not only my perception but my research experience as well) the sheer lack of data over the last 100 years of movie-making which would prevent following the more accurate course of action. Still, it’s better than no adjustment to represent a movie’s frequencies of which showings occur within context of initial release theatrical lifespan.
One last note regarding theater counts (applicable only to a few of the movies in this list): In the absence of an actual list of reported weekly theater counts, I was able to mathematically arrive at an estimated average for the respective movie via reported overall total theater engagements through the end of initial release theatrical lifespan (for example, The Sound of Music reportedly appeared in over 9,000 theatrical engagements by the end of its four-plus-year initial theatrical lifespan); furthermore, I gave benefit of the doubt to the older movies and remained conservative with these calculations.
One final note applicable to the first three adjustments (i.e., inflation, population, and per-capita): When a movie’s earnings span multiple years, for a greater accuracy, each year is figured separately then added together for the total.
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The List:
It’s important to note that, due to the extreme labor-intensive nature of this research (as noted in the introduction, already over a year in the making…and counting), this list is not all-inclusive; with minimal exception I chose to compare only movies from the upper-end of the “most successful of all time” unadjusted/adjusted charts.
Please note the entries at the lower portion of the list suffer from lack of data (at varying levels), which prevents the application of the full five-adjustment corrective calculations. Many of these movies would likely have a significant impact on this list; thus, are being included so as not to mislead as well as to emphasize this is still a work in progress.
Therefore, in this seemingly never-ending quest to compare apples-to-apples, normalizing all of the variables involved (i.e., inflation, population, per-capita, initial release duration, and theater count) produces the following results [drum-roll please]:
| Rank: | Title: | Release Year: | 5-Adjustment Monetary-Gross
(Tickets-Sold): | Ticket to Population
Percentage: |
|---|
| 1 | Star Wars | 1977 | $1,429,592,858
(179,597,093) | 51.34% |
| 2 | Return of the Jedi | 1983 | $999,860,692
(125,610,640) | 35.91% |
| 3 | The Empire Strikes Back | 1980 | $928,800,545
(116,683,486) | 33.35% |
| 4 | Jaws | 1975 | $846,298,698
(106,318,932) | 30.39% |
| 5 | E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial | 1982 | $778,234,691
(97,768,177) | 27.95% |
| 6 | The Sound of Music | 1965 | $759,304,688
(95,390,036) | 27.27% |
| 7 | Batman | 1989 | $683,204,277
(85,829,683) | 24.54% |
| 8 | Avatar | 2009 | $660,907,717
(83,028,608) | 23.73% |
| 9 | Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith | 2005 | $637,059,219
(80,032,565) | 22.88% |
| 10 | Marvel’s The Avengers | 2012 | $623,357,910
(78,311,295) | 22.39% |
| 11 | Raiders of the Lost Ark | 1981 | $597,747,994
(75,093,969) | 21.47% |
| 12 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 | 2011 | $593,178,225
(74,519,877) | 21.30% |
| 13 | Jurassic Park | 1993 | $579,793,549
(72,838,386) | 20.82% |
| 14 | Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace | 1999 | $569,726,742
(71,573,711) | 20.46% |
| 15 | The Dark Knight | 2008 | $568,667,588
(71,440,652) | 20.42% |
| 16 | Transformers: Dark of the Moon | 2011 | $566,480,479
(71,165,889) | 20.34% |
| 17 | Spider-Man | 2002 | $565,772,121
(71,076,900) | 20.32% |
| 18 | Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest | 2006 | $538,118,634
(67,602,843) | 19.32% |
| 19 | The Dark Knight Rises | 2012 | $513,489,551
(64,508,738) | 18.44% |
| 20 | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | 2009 | $502,236,576
(63,095,047) | 18.04% |
| 21 | Shrek II | 2004 | $501,282,086
(62,975,136) | 18.00% |
| 22 | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End | 2007 | $498,224,287
(62,590,991) | 17.89% |
| 23 | Spider-Man 2 | 2004 | $497,857,465
(62,544,908) | 17.88% |
| 24 | Toy Story 3 | 2010 | $476,731,071
(59,890,838) | 17.12% |
| 25 | Alice in Wonderland | 2010 | $474,100,120
(59,560,317) | 17.03% |
| 26 | The Lion King | 1994 | $473,273,417
(59,456,459) | 17.00% |
| 27 | Titanic | 1997 | $458,433,589
(57,592,159) | 16.46% |
| 28 | The Passion of the Christ | 2004 | $442,053,971
(55,534,418) | 15.87% |
| 29 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | 2007 | $437,178,485
(54,921,920) | 15.70% |
| 30 | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | 2002 | $435,512,395
(54,712,612) | 15.64% |
| 31 | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | 2003 | $432,764,790
(54,367,436) | 15.54% |
| 32 | Forest Gump | 1994 | $429,740,828
(53,987,541) | 15.43% |
| 33 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 | 2010 | $421,495,974
(52,951,756) | 15.14% |
| 34 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | 2001 | $416,453,244
(52,318,247) | 14.96% |
| 35 | The Hunger Games | 2012 | $402,668,224
(50,586,460) | 14.46% |
| 36 | Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides | 2011 | $398,941,895
(50,118,328) | 14.33% |
| 37 | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | 2009 | $397,675,227
(49,959,199) | 14.28% |
| 38 | Finding Nemo | 2003 | $378,267,685
(47,521,066) | 13.58% |
| 39 | Batman Begins | 2005 | $348,180,008
(43,741,207) | 12.50% |
| 40 | Gone With the Wind | 1939 | $292,759,196
(36,778,793) | 10.51% |
| Many of the following movies would likely have a significant impact on this list; however, due to lack of data these were not subject to the full 5-adjustment corrective calculations, are unranked, and listed in descending order of initial release unadjusted monetary-gross. |
| Rank: | Title: | Release Year: | Initial Release Unadjusted Monetary-Gross: | Ticket to Population
Percentage: |
|---|
| N/A | The Exorcist | 1973 | $165,000,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Sting | 1973 | $156,000,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Godfather | 1972 | $133,698,921 | N/A |
| N/A | Close Encounters of the Third Kind | 1977 | $116,395,460 | N/A |
| N/A | Love Story | 1970 | $106,397,186 | N/A |
| N/A | The Graduate | 1967 | $93,958,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Doctor Zhivago | 1965 | $93,740,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Ben Hur | 1959 | $80,006,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Ten Commandments | 1956 | $74,556,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Mary Poppins | 1964 | $67,580,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Jungle Book | 1967 | $28,340,000 | N/A |
| N/A | 101 Dalmatians | 1961 | $27,250,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Best Years of Our Lives | 1946 | $22,672,000 | N/A |
| N/A | The Bells of St. Mary’s | 1945 | $21,333,333 | N/A |
| N/A | This is the Army | 1943 | $18,530,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Lady and the Tramp | 1955 | $14,170,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Peter Pan | 1953 | $13,080,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Sleeping Beauty | 1959 | $11,554,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Cinderella | 1950 | $9,374,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | 1937 | $3,500,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Song of the South | 1946 | $3,300,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Bambi | 1942 | $3,000,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Fantasia | 1940 | $2,180,000 | N/A |
| N/A | Pinocchio | 1940 | $2,180,000 | N/A |
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Comments/
Conclusions:
Even though it cracked the top 10, with these revelations I must admit, due to my high expectations I’m unpleasantly surprised that Marvel’s The Avengers didn’t rank as high as I thought it would. Although, considering it more from a summary perspective, with the top 10 mostly dominated by older movies (only the last three entries being from this millennium) and the first Star Wars trilogy claiming the top three spots, maybe making the top 10 is an accomplishment after all.
Speaking of which, I’m rather surprised—almost to the point of disbelief—by the
Stars Wars ranking; not that it is number one but the fact that it is number one
by such a large margin and with a 51% population involvement! Can you imagine a film grossing $1.43
billion in the North American box office alone over only a five-month initial theatrical lifespan? What’s putting it that far over-the-top is the business it did with such a low theater count: it only averaged 402 theaters/week over its 532-day initial theatrical lifespan (recalling from the aforementioned above, that’s compared to 1,689 theaters/week over a 154-day initial theatrical lifespan for
Marvel’s The Avengers).
Furthermore, another surprise was Tim Burton’s Batman ranking above Marvel’s The Avengers and the films of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy to become the highest ranking CBM (Comic Book Movie) on this list; candidly, if any Batman film were to rank higher than Marvel’s The Avengers, I would have expected it to be The Dark Knight.
In addition, I find it note-worthy that Gone With the Wind ranks as low as it does and with only 10% population involvement. While it was certainly a hit of its era, this is further proof that it didn’t perform as well, comparatively speaking, in its three-plus-year initial theatrical lifespan as most seem to think; its inflation adjusted #1 all-time ranking is totally due to the last 70 years (since the end of its initial release in July, 1943) worth of monetary-gross/tickets-sold accumulation via re-releases.
Unfortunately, I’ve also come to the conclusion that we may never know the true overall ranking order due to the extreme labor-intensive research involved to include every possible film, combined with the lack of data regarding some of the older movies. Nevertheless, as previously mentioned, due to the lack of data on this list, this is still a work in progress and if anyone’s receptive I can try to post updates when/if I uncover/acquire any additional data affecting the rank order.
In fact, if anyone reading this has credible knowledge regarding data of older movies and willing to share, I would thankfully accept it with open arms. For the movies lacking on this list or any movie you would like to see gain an entry, specifically, I’m in need of initial release opening/closing dates (to calculate release duration) and a list of weekly theater counts (to calculate average weekly theater count) or even overall total theatrical engagements through end of initial release (e.g., recalling from the aforementioned above, The Sound of Music reportedly appeared in over 9,000 theatrical engagements by the end of its four-plus-year initial theatrical lifespan).
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Sources:
As you can probably tell, Mr. Schmidt’s work had a massive influence on me throughout this process. I would like to publicly say thank you to him and express my sincere gratitude for his permission to “borrow” the results of his hard work to utilize in mine; without his trailblazing work, I would never have gotten as far as I did.
The data used to build this ranking system was acquired through extensive, time-consuming research of many different resources (using an excruciatingly slow dial-up internet-access connection), most of which are represented below:
Acquired/utilized the “adjustment” concept from
The 20 Most Popular Movies of all Time page; acquired/utilized data from the
Box Office Data Page for most of: average ticket price, U.S. population, and total domestic box office gross; however, generated new per-capita figures due to including Canada’s population in this work’s methodology.
Utilized the upper-end of the
All Time Unadjusted/
All Time Adjusted for ticket price inflation charts during the movie selection process; acquired/utilized data from the
Yearly Box Office page; acquired/utilized data from the
Movies A-Z Alphabetical Index entries for many respective (some older, mostly newer) movie’s: release year, initial release yearly grosses (and/or initial release total gross), initial release opening/closing dates (to calculate release duration), and weekly theater counts (to calculate average weekly theater count).
Referenced the
All Time Records page during the movie selection process; acquired/utilized data from the
Alphabetical Movies Index entries for many respective (some older, mostly newer) movie’s: release year, initial release yearly grosses (and/or initial release total gross), initial release opening/closing dates (to calculate release duration), and weekly theater counts (to calculate average weekly theater count).
Acquired/utilized data from the free searches of the
Advanced Search 1906-Present Archives for multiple respective older movie’s: initial release yearly grosses (and/or initial release total gross) and initial release closing dates (to calculate release duration).
Acquired/utilized data from the articles in the
Blog/Memories section for multiple respective older movie’s: initial release yearly grosses (and/or initial release total gross), initial release closing dates (to calculate release duration), and weekly (or overall total) theater counts (to calculate average weekly theater count).
Acquired/utilized data from the
Film Database entries for multiple respective post 1988 movie’s: initial release yearly grosses (and/or initial release total gross) and initial release closing dates (to calculate release duration).
Acquired/utilized data from
The Top Box-Office Movies in America 1921-1970 page for many respective pre 1971 movie’s: initial release U.S./Canadian rental gross (to calculate total gross using standard 2.18 gross-multiplier for years 1939-1988).
Acquired/utilized data from the United States Census Bureau U.S. and World Population Clock webpage.
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