The Most Popular Movie of All-Time?

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www.waynesthisandthat.com/mostpopularmovies.html

The most famous movie of all-time is Titanic,IMO.

No movie made more money than Titanic.2 billion in theatres and 1.2 billion in DVD sales.That too 15 years back



http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?perpage=100

Star Wars (1977) is the #1 most popular movie globally based on flickchart's users

Titanic is ranked #748



I agree that Star Wars is the most popular,not because of some sale statistics but it just seems that everyone knows the film and lot of its details even without seeing it.



www.waynesthisandthat.com/mostpopularmovies.html

The most famous movie of all-time is Titanic,IMO.

No movie made more money than Titanic.2 billion in theatres and 1.2 billion in DVD sales.That too 15 years back
The correct way of measuring the popularity of a movie is based on the proportion of the total admissions it takes on it's release year.

Star Wars is clearly the leading film in US film history in terms of admissions in proportion to total admissions: 18% of all admissions in 1977 were for Star Wars. For comparison, only 9% of 1997 admissions were for Titanic, half of Star Wars and 7.5% for Avatar in 2009.

In other countries, however, other movies may be locally as much popular as Star Wars is in the US: in Japan in 2001, Spirited Away took 15.2% of all admissions, nearly as much as Star Wars and much more than any US film did since Star Wars. Though, its impact on pop culture wasn't comparable.



Based on ticket sales, I'm guessing it's still Gone With The Wind.
Gone with the Wind had slightly admissions than Star Wars. However, Gone with the Wind was released in 1939, when people didn't have TVs and so they were going with the movies with more frequency than in 1977, adjusted for the total admissions in the US, Star Wars took 18% of the tickets in 1977, compared to 10% for Gone with the Wind in 1939.

Also, Star Wars had more admissions if you take all other countries that it was released, plus take into account VHS, DVD, Netflix and Blu Ray sales.

It's impact on popular culture and on the film industry was also greater than any other movie. The New Hollywood style emerged after 1977, focused on genre movies, epic scale drama and special effects, contrasting with the Classic Hollywood, more personal movies in non-fantastical settings and focused on character development.



Those are very interesting numbers, but per usual you dramatically overstate your case when you say admissions are the "correct" way. Like any metric, it fails to account for a lot. For example, you yourself said that there were fewer entertainment options in 1939 and that people went to the movies more often. But this makes Gone With the Wind's totals more impressive, not less: the more moviegoing there is, the lower each film's relative percentage of admissions will be. It's easier to dominate that measure when fewer people are participating. Gone With the Wind is also nearly twice as long as Star Wars, which means fewer showings per day, which cuts heavily into admissions. And so on.

There is no correct way, but if I had to nominate one, it would be inflation-adjusted gross, because the price of the ticket is fluid and therefore takes a lot of these other things into account for us. If people are going to the movies far more often, prices are lower, which is reflected in the gross.

I agree, however, about cultural impact. How much of that has to do with the fact that we're several decades closer to Star Wars, I don't know, but at the moment it's certainly true.



These lists always look at who got the most ticket and DVD sales. Breaking a billion etc.

One thing these lists never do when looking at success, is take into account actual Profit.

Ok, as an example... Avatar cost $237m then another $9m on re-release ($246,000,000)... they made $2,782,300,000 so far with tickets, DVDs and BluRays.
Grande profit 2,545,300,000 which is just over 10 times what it cost.

But take a completely abysmal film that never shows up on these lists... the first Paranormal Activity film.
Made on a budget of $15,000... yet made $193,355,800 at the box office alone and then more on top with home sales.
That's a profit of nearly 13,000 times what it cost in cinema tickets alone.

So who is the real winner? Avatar or the abysmal Paranormal Activity?


There's a ton other comparisons like this that none of these lists look at.



Great point. Especially considering that larger budgets tend to involve more money spent on promotion. Just another reason that no one metric is sufficient.



http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_rand...f-all-time.php

Here's a good list. The 20 most profitable films, percentage wise, of all time.
this type thing is always more fascinating to me than how much money movies like Titanic and Avatar made...

I mean, how impressive is it really for a movie with a $250 million budget to multiply its budget 5 times... while a movie like Halloween '78 multiplied its $325,000 budget 215 times



Those are very interesting numbers, but per usual you dramatically overstate your case when you say admissions are the "correct" way. Like any metric, it fails to account for a lot. For example, you yourself said that there were fewer entertainment options in 1939 and that people went to the movies more often. But this makes Gone With the Wind's totals more impressive, not less:
No, it makes less impressive because it is easier to get X admissions when people go more often to the movies. It is easier to get 200 million admissions if you have a market where there are two billion admissions per year than where you have one billion admissions per year.

That Star Wars managed to reach 90% of the number of admissions of Gone with the Wind when the total number of people who came to the theaters was smaller is much more impressive.

the more moviegoing there is, the lower each film's relative percentage of admissions will be.
Not if the number of movies being released is comparable. In 1939 and 1977 the number of movies released in US theaters was rather similar at 600-700 movies released per year.

It's easier to dominate that measure when fewer people are participating.
No it is not. The number of admissions per year in a country don't have any direct effect on the difficulty in obtaining a percentage of total admissions to your film. In other words, if there are 500 films released when there are 1 billion tickets sold and 500 film released when there are 2 billion tickets sold, therefore the first case would be much harder to attain the same number of admissions as the second.

[quote]
Gone With the Wind is also nearly twice as long as Star Wars, which means fewer showings per day, which cuts heavily into admissions. And so on.
Perhaps. Cinemas would have less incentive to show Gone with the Wind because it was much longer.

There is no correct way, but if I had to nominate one, it would be inflation-adjusted gross, because the price of the ticket is fluid and therefore takes a lot of these other things into account for us. If people are going to the movies far more often, prices are lower, which is reflected in the gross.
Inflation adjusted gross is the number of admissions.

It is much easier to make a film gross 500 million in 1939 than it was in 1977, in inflation adjusted dollars, because the market was bigger. It is much harder to make a movie gross 200 million in Japan than in the US, because Japan is a smaller market. A movie needs to be much more popular if it grosses 200 million in Japan which is roughly equivalent to grossing 900 million in the US.



These lists always look at who got the most ticket and DVD sales. Breaking a billion etc.

One thing these lists never do when looking at success, is take into account actual Profit.

Ok, as an example... Avatar cost $237m then another $9m on re-release ($246,000,000)... they made $2,782,300,000 so far with tickets, DVDs and BluRays.
Grande profit 2,545,300,000 which is just over 10 times what it cost.
Actually if you want to measure actual profit you have to take into account cost of promotion and the costs of the theaters as well. Overall, the ticket price consists of 50-60% of the cost of the theater and only 40-50% goes to the Studio which made the movie.

Avatar cost 250 million to make plus 300 million on promotion. That's 550 million, since the studio only get's 40-50% of the total income in ticket sales, Avatar should have made at least 1.1 billion to 1.4 billion in box office to turn a profit.

So who is the real winner? Avatar or the abysmal Paranormal Activity?
What maters is total profit: the net profit the company made after spending money on the film. Since total profit reflects the total return. Avatar made 2.78 billion with ticket sales (not DVD and Blu-Rays, which would add certainly at least several hundred million). That means a total distribution income of 1,390,000,000 to 1,112,000,000 dollars to the studio, given production and distribution costs of 550 million, the net profit of Avatar with ticket sales was 562,000,000 to 840,000,000 dollars, or around 3/4 of a billion dollars.

The net profit of Paranormal Activity was 193,000,000*(0.4 - 0.5) - 15,000 (production costs) - distribution costs (let's assume around 1 million dollars), which means a net profit of around 80-90 million dollars, or nearly 10 times less than Avatar.



So... if you made a film that cost you $1 billion... and it made $2 billion in tickets and DVD sales, you'd be better off than someone who made a film for $10 and they made $2 billion as well.

You both made $2 billion, you're both the same?



So... if you made a film that cost you $1 billion... and it made $2 billion in tickets and DVD sales, you'd be better off than someone who made a film for $10 and they made $2 billion as well.

You both made $2 billion, you're both the same?
Of course not. Where does he say that?



No, it makes less impressive because it is easier to get X admissions when people go more often to the movies. It is easier to get 200 million admissions if you have a market where there are two billion admissions per year than where you have one billion admissions per year.
If you were a little less eager to contradict, you might realize I was talking about percentage of admissions, not total admissions.

Not if the number of movies being released is comparable. In 1939 and 1977 the number of movies released in US theaters was rather similar at 600-700 movies released per year.
Where is this data coming from?

No it is not. The number of admissions per year in a country don't have any direct effect on the difficulty in obtaining a percentage of total admissions to your film. In other words, if there are 500 films released when there are 1 billion tickets sold and 500 film released when there are 2 billion tickets sold, therefore the first case would be much harder to attain the same number of admissions as the second.
Again, I'm talking about percentage of admissions, just as you were. And I suspect the phrase "direct effect" is hiding an assumption or two. There's certainly no universal law that says rising ticket sales leads to more diversity in what gets bought, but that's always what happens in practice. The logic of it's pretty simple: you sell more tickets when you have more interest, and any expanding industry is absorbing new people, which means more varied taste and increased fragmentation. We see it in all media: there are more TV viewers than ever, yet the top-rated programs have a lower share of viewership than they used to.

Perhaps. Cinemas would have less incentive to show Gone with the Wind because it was much longer.
Aye. But more than that, it's a simple logistical limitation. Even if they were determined to show it as often as possible, they can't show it more than maybe 2-3 times a day, at most, per screen. That matters a lot. I don't know if you happen to enjoy box office prognostication, but for those who do, things like runtime are always taken into account when trying to predict a film's gross.

Inflation adjusted gross is the number of admissions.
Huh? Gross is not admissions, it's admissions multiplied by ticket price, and tickets cost different amounts over time even when adjusted for inflation.

It is much easier to make a film gross 500 million in 1939 than it was in 1977, in inflation adjusted dollars, because the market was bigger. It is much harder to make a movie gross 200 million in Japan than in the US, because Japan is a smaller market. A movie needs to be much more popular if it grosses 200 million in Japan which is roughly equivalent to grossing 900 million in the US.
How do you figure that the movie industry was larger in 1939 than in 1977?



What he was saying is that films like Avatar are more successful because they make x-times more money than films like Paranormal Activity.

Well, yes, 2.5 billion is more than 193 million... but...

... in terms of percentage profit compared to actual cost, cheaper films, when successful, are way more profitable.

For a film like Avatar to make the same percentage profit (cost-profit) as a film like Paranormal Activity, it would need to make a grand profit of 13,000 times its cost.

$246,000,000 x 13,000 = $3,198,000,000,000 (3 trillion, one hundred and ninety eight billion dollars).

It made back only 10 times its cost (2,545,300,000), not 13 thousand times its cost.



Which is more successful sort of depends on what you're trying to measure. Total profit is a good way of measuring, well, total profit, but it doesn't tell you who's making better decisions, because it does not account for risk.

There's also the fact that the money is tied up in the production and can't be used for anything else while that's true. Because of this second reason, it would generally be more beneficial to have a film that makes slightly less total profit, but costs a lot less than one which makes slightly more. So even total profit could be harmed depending on the time frame you're looking at, because more money is tied up for longer.