Yeah, that’s right folks! Avatar, the epic sci-fi 3D blockbuster that’s raking in all kinds of money, still has yet to surpass Star Wars or even Titanic when it comes to the gross adjusted for inflation, so says the LA Times. It’s so freaking expensive these days to go see a film, and 3D at the IMAX even more so, that the gross receipts add up quickly. But as any economist who has made it past the third grade will tell you, the dollar adjusts in value. It’s now probably worth less than 1/32 of a peso in the current economy, so it takes a lot of them to buy stuff. To compare apples to oranges we must adjust for inflation when determining “all time richest” at the box office. It’s just fairness, and if the film industry were a T-Ball Team you know they’d keep score. Well it’s a good thing that Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times set the record straight in his article: Should ‘Avatar’ get an asterisk in the box-office record books?
In an adjusted for inflation all-time box-office Top 10 (compiled by Dergarabedian), ”Gone With the Wind” is the easy winner, with George Lucas’ 1977 “Star Wars” in the No. 2 slot, with $1.26 billion in grosses, followed by 1965′s “Sound of Music,” 1982′s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 1956′s “The Ten Commandments.”
Jim Cameron’s “Titanic” comes in at No. 6 on the chart (with $955 million) while ”Avatar” doesn’t even come close to making the Top 10, with a mere $558 million in grosses.
Okay, so Avatar will make more money, and considering the total production costs including P&A are estimated around half a billion dollars, that’s a good thing. Profit is not a four letter word. But it’s important to note that Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, resplendent in her poofy dresses, smacked down some uber pwnage on Jake Sully and his merry band of Na’vi. Star Wars slides in at number two, still way in front of Avatar.
Mr. Goldstein goes on to highlight what happens when the list is not adjusted for inflation.
To give you an idea how different the adjusted gross box-office chart is from the all-time box-office chart we normally follow, “Gone With the Wind” doesn’t even make the Top 50 all-time box-office leaders chart–the one that now has “Avatar” on top.
I know… it’s not cool or fair, but I understand it. Hollywood needs to trumpet it’s successes and if they need to spin the numbers to tell a certain story, well sometimes it’s what’s done. Is it right? It depends. I’m normally one who digs into the facts, especially when it comes to money–it’s the old executive in me. But the fact of the matter is that Star Wars is still the king in box office when it comes to genre films.
Read Patrick Goldstein’s article in it’s entirety; it will give you all the information you need to help in the arguments that will no doubt come up at your next Con. For me, I’m still glad my favorite film is number one… at number two.
