Galactus
Devourer of Worlds
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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 Exorcist.......................................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 Exorcist.......................................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.
I almost got a headache when I read this article. But what you can say is that maybe there is no simple answer to what movie is exactly number one of all time, considering that those old movies got multiple re-releases.
