The 20 Most Popular Movies of all Time: U.S. box office totals for the top money-earners corrected for inflation, population and ticket purchasing trends.
While
adjusting for inflation more fairly compares an older movie's
success to modern films, it's only one of three factors that should
be taken into account. The other two are population changes and per
capita ticket purchasing trend changes.
The U.S. population in 1949 was 149,000,000, one-half of 2005. To compare the success of a movie from 1949 to one in 2005 the total box office gross must be doubled, after increasing it to adjust for inflation, to reflect the fact that its potential audience doubled over those years.
Social, political, and economic factors influence the number of people willing to pay to go to the movies. These factors can be determined by calculating the per capita ticket purchasing rate for a particular year. Normalizing this to the reference year, 2004 in this study, normalizes 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. For Example, in 1946 the per capita movie ticket purchasing rate for the average person was 34 tickets a year. In 2004 this average rate had dropped to only 5 tickets per person per year in response mainly to competition from television.
By adjusting for all three parameters that effect the total box office receipts for a particular movie a more accurate comparison can be made between movies released in different eras. The data for these correction parameters is available at: BOX OFFICE DATA.
To determine a movie's box office gross adjusted for inflation, population, and per capita ticket purchasing trends, its box office total was multiplied by the ratio of the 2004 average ticket price to the release year ticket price to correct for inflation, the ratio of the 2004 population to the release year population, and the ratio of the per capita ticket purchasing trend in 2004 to the per capita rate in the release year. This provides a dollar amount reflecting how the film would have done in 2004, the most recent complete reference year. For example, let's look at Bing Crosby's 1945 blockbuster The Bells of St. Mary's:
Total
1945 box office = $21.3 million
Adjusted
for inflation = $21.3 million x $6.21 (2004 average ticket price)
= $389 million
...................................................$0.34
(1945 average ticket price)
Adjusted
for population = $389
million x 293M
(population in 2004) = $814
million
.......................................................140M
(population in 1945)
Adjusted
for per capita
ticket
purchasing trends = $814
million x 5.24
(average rate for 2004) = $140
million
........................................................30.46
(average rate for 1945)
As can be seen, adjusting for only inflation or population gives an inflated number suggesting that the relative popularity of the movie was greater than it truly is. The reason is that in 1945 people went to the movies almost 6 times as often as they do today.
Several older movies, like Gone With The Wind, Bambi, Snow White, Star Wars, etc., were released then re-released several times in later years. For this page the gross for the initial release year and each re-release year was calculated separately then added together. It should be noted that although dollar amounts are used to rank the movies, these numbers should more accurately be considered as popularity numbers since they indicate how the movies should have done in the 2004 market, with the assumption that the purchasing population had the same movie style preference as the release year population.
The
following list ranks the most popular 21 movies of all time after
adjusting for inflation, population and per capita ticket purchasing trends:
1.
The Sound of Music............................1965..........$1,678
million
2.
The Exocist.......................................1973..........$1,283
million
3.
Star Wars.........................................1977..........$1,237
million
4.
E.T..................................................1982..........$1,202
million
5.
Jaws................................................1975..........$1,171
million
6.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs........1937..........$1,066
million
7.
Doctor Zhivago..................................1965..........$1,153
million
8.
Gone With The Wind............................1939..........$1,093
million
9.
Mary Poppins.....................................1964..........$1,065
million
10.
The Jungle Book...............................1967..........$1,019
million
11.
The Graduate..................................1967..........$1,002
million
12.
The Sting........................................1973..........$1,001
million
13.
101 Dalmations................................1959.............$973
million
14.
Bambi............................................1942.............$946
million
15.
Titanic...........................................1997.............$902
million
16.
Return of the Jedi............................1983.............$885
million
17.
Raiders of the Lost Arc......................1981.............$778
million
18.
Ben Hur..........................................1959.............$697
million
19.
The Empire Strikes Back....................1980.............$690
million
20.
Jurassic Park...................................1993.............$660
million
21.
The Ten Commandments...................1956.............$547
million
I
was surprised the Gone With The Wind ranked so low in as much
as it's usually #1 in charts corrected for inflation. The reason is
that none of them take into consideration the effects of population
and per capita ticket purchasing rates.
Two
weeks after posting the list above I realized that there was
something wrong with it. Because of the rapid release of movies on
VHS and DVD, for the last 25 years popular films have not been
re-released in theaters. This puts them at a disadvantage when
comparing them to older films whose box office gross includes the
receipts for multiple re-releases. For example, Gone With
The Wind was re-released 6 times and the box office gross of $200
million accredited to it includes money from all these releases. It's
modern counterpart, Titanic, only had a single release from
which to earn money.
To treat all the movies fairly, I've decided to put together a second list comparing their box office grosses from only their initial release. The following grosses are corrected for inflation, population, and per capita ticket purchasing trends:
1.
The Sound of Music............................1965..........$1,678
million...
2.
The Exocist.......................................1973..........$1,283
million...
3.
E.T..................................................1982..........$1,202
million...
4.
Jaws................................................1975..........$1,678
million...
5.
Dr. Zhivago.......................................1965..........$1,153
million...
6.
Mary Poppins.....................................1964..........$1,065
million...
7.
The Graduate....................................1975..........$1,002
million...
8.
The Sting..........................................1973..........$1,001
million...
9.
101 Dalmations..................................1959.............$973
million...
10.
The Jungle Book...............................1967.............$934
million...
11.
Titanic...........................................1997.............$902
million...
12.
Star Wars.......................................1977.............$869
million...
13.
Raiders of the Lost Arc......................1981.............$778
million...
14.
Bambi............................................1942.............$709
million...
15.
Ben Hur..........................................1959.............$697
million...
16.
Return of the Jedi............................1983.............$668
million...
17.
Jurassic Park...................................1993.............$660
million...
18.
Forest Gump...................................1994.............$579
million...
19.
The Lion King...................................1994.............$579
million...
20.
The 10 Commandments,....................1956.............$547
million...
21.
The Empire Strikes Back....................1980.............$451
million...
22.
Shrek II..........................................2004.............$436
million...
23.
Gone With The Wind,.........................1939............$416
million...
What,
you may ask, happened to Gone With The Wind? Why did it move
so far down the list? The answer is simply that while it was a great
hit it only took in $32 million from its initial release. (This
figure has been confirmed by three different and independent
sources.) The bulk of its total box office gross came from the six
times it has been re-released. Counting these would be as unfair to
the new movies as it would be to count their DVD and VHS sales and
not count them for GWTW. Similarly, this is why the three
original Star Wars movies dropped so low: much of their total
take was from their re-releases.
Why was The Sound Of Music so popular? The answer was several factors combined to focus enormous popular sentiment for it.
The lead star, Julie Andrews, was enormously popular on Broadway as the star of My Fair Lady, one of the most successful plays every produced. When it was reported that she'd been passed over in favor of Audrey Hepburn for the movie version of the play, there was a nationwide outrage. Shorty thereafter Disney Studios released the wildly successful Mary Poppins (the sixth most popular movie of all time) starring Julie Andrews. The two events catapulted her to unbelievable levels of popularity, hyping the American public in her favor. When The Sound Of Music came out less than a year later people flocked to it in droves. Although often criticized as being too sweet and idealistic by critics, the American people were primed for just such a movie. The early 1960s was a tumultuous time as the Vietnam war escalated with no end in site. People were desperate for a few hours of simple peace and hope. The Sound Of Music was just what they were looking for.
Supporting the movie's popularity was the outstanding success of the soundtrack featuring Julie Andrews' beautiful singing. It has sold over 11 million copies and is still being produced today, half a century after the movie came out. Just as the success of Celine Dion's Titanic album (9 million units sold) supported the movie of the same name, so Julie Andrews' album supported The Sound Of Music.
Finally, just as the fact that the movie Titanic was a true story, or at least based on an actual ship sinking, and had its popularity boosted by stories of survivors attending premiers, so also was The Sound Of Music a true story and several of the Van Trapp children were featured in widely circulated news stories about their watching the movie. Titanic also benefited from the televised discovery of the actual Titanic. In the same way The Sound Of Music received a boost from the fact that the Van Trapp family had moved to Vermont and opened a lodge where guests could stay and hear them sing. News stories with photos of them and their lodge validated the "true story" aspect of the movie. (The Van Trapp lodge is still active and thousands of people stay there every year.) One additional plus for the movie is that because the Van Trapps decided to come to the United States to live, it appealed to the nation's nationalistic sympathies.
I don't wish to create the impression that the movie's success was only the result of the confluence of random events. It was an excellent movie by any standards regardless of critical reviews, garnering four Golden Globe nominations of which it won two and ten Oscar nominations, of which it won five.
AVATAR UPDATE!!!
The 2009/2010 box office juggernaut Avatar invites comparison to the other box office greats to see how it fairs across the decades. Corrected to 2010 dollars, the following list compares it to three previous megahits after correcting for inflation, population and ticket purchasing trends:
Avatar: .....................$750 million domestically (US)
Star Wars: ................$965 million
Titanic: .................$1,001 million
The Sound of Music: $1,863 million
While
Avatar is a significant economic success during the 2009/2010
period, historically it only ranks around 15th position.
Data for this page was obtained from www.imdb.com, www.the-numbers.com, www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5924/facts.htm, www.natoonline.org, www.worldwideboxoffice.com, and the text Movie Time by Gene Brown, MacMillan, 1995, and The Hollywood Story, Joel W. Finler, Crown Publishing Inc, N.Y., 1988.
Return the the mainpage and browse 100 other topics: everything from Knitting Nancys and electric rocket engines to the strange world of lucid dreaming.