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What makes a movie the most successful movie ever?

17.4.2020

Translation: Eva Francis

Last year, «Avengers: Endgame» was named the most successful movie of all time. Critics disagree and claim if numbers are adjusted for inflation, «Gone with the Wind» is number one. Who's lying?

July 2019. Marvel fans were over the moon, as «Avengers: Endgame» made 2.797 billion dollars and became the highest-grossing movie worldwide. More than any other film had made before.

«Thanks to you, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is the biggest film of all-time,» Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige proudly announced in front of thousands of fans at Comic-Con in San Diego.

«Not true,» say industry experts and the media, including Forbes. According to them, «Gone with the Wind» has been much more successful since its cinema release in 1939 – that’s if the annual inflation is taken into account.

So, who's right?

Inflation-adjusted: what does that even mean?

Inflation? Let's make this as short as possible. The more value a currency has, the more you can buy with the money. This is related to your purchasing power. If the value of a currency decreases, you need more money to buy the same goods as before. You lose purchasing power. Or goods get more expensive.

That's inflation.

Here’s an example: in 1940, a cinema ticket in the USA cost about 0.25 dollars on average. But the dollar is worth less today than it was back then. Therefore, 0.25 dollars is no longer enough to buy the same cinema ticket; today it takes 9.26 dollars – the ticket has become more expensive. Inflation has caused higher prices.

When Kevin Feige talks about the most successful film of all times, he compares the box office results of different periods without considering the price level at that time. A film that was released in the 1940s couldn't make nearly as much money as «Avengers: Endgame», even if it had sold twice as many tickets. Simply because a cinema ticket at the time cost a fraction of what it does today. Feige knows that, of course. But it’s all about marketing.

What would make more sense than comparing apples with pears? Agreeing on an index year, as suggested by Forbes and many other industry magazines and experts. In other words, agreeing on the price level of one year and applying it to all the years before that. If we adjusted the box office results of all films to the price level of the index year, we’d get an «inflation-adjusted» list. That’s a list with the same price level for all films. One that would make it possible to compare which film is actually the most successful of all time.

This is exactly what the Guinness Book of World Records does every year, taking the current year as the index year. The result? «Avengers: Endgame» isn’t the highest-grossing film ever. It’s «Gone with the Wind» from 1939. At that time, it brought in 402.3 million dollars. At today's price level, that’s 3.71 billion dollars – almost a billion dollars more than the Marvel film made last year.

Here’s the top 10:

Background information
Trailer Tuesday, gold edition: the trailers to the highest-grossing movies ever
by Luca Fontana

So we have a clear winner, right? Why continue to debate at all?

Well, it's not that easy.

The pitfalls of the inflation-adjusted list

Sure, the inflation-adjusted list compensates for the factor of the price level. Well, partly. However, depending on the economic situation, inflation is not the same everywhere in the world. Or even the economic situation itself. Anyway, the methods used to measure inflation are controversial. On top of this, dozens of new cinema markets have emerged over the past 80 years. China, for instance. Filmmaking is also becoming more expensive: a cinema ticket reflects production costs that have nothing to do with inflation. The same applies for price drivers such as IMAX and 3D surcharges, which didn’t exist before.

Furthermore, the list ignores many factors that contribute to the success or failure of a film. To name a few:

wars
size of the world population
leisure time alternatives and competition
re-releases
ticket surcharges

Let's take «Gone with the Wind» as an example. Since its premiere on 15 December 1939 at the Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta – the cinema was damaged by fire in January 1978 and never reopened – the film has been re-released twelve times. «Avengers: Endgame» only once. So «Gone» had more time to sell more tickets. About 200 million within the USA. With about 94 million tickets, «Endgame» has only managed to sell just under half of that – but within a few months, not decades, and

even though the public today has many more options to decide what to spend their money on. Even if we leave out competing leisure activities such as sporting events, festivals, concerts or the booming streaming business.

Which options? The vast choice of cinema films and major productions that didn’t exist fifty years ago. In 2018, for example, Marvel released «Black Panther», «Avengers: Infinity War» and «Ant-Man and the Wasp» In the same year, «Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom», «Bohemian Rhapsody» and «Mission Impossible: Fallout» were also released. None of these films had been in cinemas for more than a few months when the Blu-ray and DVD release was due – or the next major movie was out.

«Gone with the Wind» didn’t have this kind of competition. On the contrary. Comparable large-scale productions were released only once every few years. And once out, these movies were screened for years, not months. At the beginning, it was horrendously expensive to go and see such a movie. A ticket would cost as much as one dollar.

Alternatives? None. The VHS cassette wouldn’t be invented until the 1970s, streaming was introduced in 2007. Not to mention Internet piracy. For decades, the only place to watch such a popular film as «Gone with the Wind» was the cinema. And once a film like that had a run, it was almost unstoppable.

What’s the truth now?

Is the inflation-adjusted list scientific? No. It’s an attempt to make fundamentally different eras more comparable. A thought experiment to compare apples with pears. That’s interesting, but ultimately not significant enough to claim that a 4-hour epic historical romance film that was successful 80 years ago would still be so today.

So when can we really speak of the «most successful film», with emphasis on «of all time»?

When I presented the top 10 highest-grossing movies (inflation-adjusted) in the last episode of Trailer Tuesday, reader augenblickmedia made a suggestion:

That's all well and good if you take the corrected box office results as an example. However, this doesn't say anything about the actual number of viewers, because they tell another story. In terms of numbers of viewers, neither «Avatar» nor «Avengers: Endgame» make the top 10.

augenblickmedia, 15 April 2020, Trailer Tuesday

I like this thinking. It might even be a bit more significant, although I don't think much would change if we used the number of tickets sold to define «success» instead of the money made. After all, we'd count in the same way, just with a different unit of measurement: instead of dollars, we'd count tickets. Any influencing factors such as wars, the economic situation, competition and recreational alternatives would still be ignored.

Update, 18 April 2020, 12:00 p.m.
Based on a user comment (thanks @reader Jonaman76!): Within the USA, «Gone with the Wind» sold the most tickets: 202 million in total. «Avengers: Endgame» sold 95 million tickets, which puts it in 16th place only.

What about the global situation?

No one seems to know. Official or reliable numbers don’t exist. Apparently because Hollywood's accounting department is more interested in the revenue than the number of tickets sold. On top of this, the price structure is not the same for small cinema owners and large cinema chains. 3D, IMAX or even breakfast cinema surcharges. This makes it difficult for statisticians to determine the average price of sold tickets. However, they would need to do so in order to deduce the number of tickets sold from the total revenue.

This is probably one of the reasons why Box Office Mojo – a US website that reports on box office results for movies – explicitly states that its figures, which only refer to the US market, are estimates.

«Est. Num Tickets»
Source: Box Office Mojo

Let's think this through. Let's think this through. Unlike «Gone with the Wind», «Avengers: Endgame» was also shown in China. The Chinese cinema market generated total revenues of 614.3 million dollars. The price of a cinema ticket in China varies greatly. Depending on the cinema chain and province, the price ranges between 2 and 14 US dollars. Let's go with 10 dollars per ticket. That would mean 61 million tickets were sold, which we could add to the 95 million tickets reported by Box Office Mojos. That's 61 million tickets that «Gone with the Wind» couldn't have sold, as the film was never shown in China – according to Box Office Mojo.

This method shrinks the gap between the two movies. And who knows if, amidst the American Civil War in the 1860s, the romance would have been seen more often in Europe or elsewhere outside the USA than the superhero movie? We’ll never know. We can only guess.

So the problem isn't the definition of success and how to measure it, but that we're trying to measure and compare success across eras that have little or nothing in common. It's as if we're trying to tell if Messi or Maradona, or Maradona and Pelé, is the better footballer. In doing so, however, we ignore factors such as improved material or advanced training methods based on scientific studies. How is that meant to result in a realistic and meaningful comparison?

In my opinion, that just doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as «the most successful movie of all time». If so, then only for marketing purposes. My suggestion: how about we agree on «the most successful movie of its time»? That would work.

34 people like this article

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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What makes a movie the most successful movie ever?

Inflation-adjusted: what does that even mean?

Trailer Tuesday, gold edition: the trailers to the highest-grossing movies ever

The pitfalls of the inflation-adjusted list

What’s the truth now?

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Down with Hollywood: China’s long road to becoming a world power in film

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