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UPDATES Rupert Murdoch Pushing For ‘Avatar 2′
In just 47 days of release, 20th Century Fox’s Avatar beat Titanic’s 12-year record with a total domestic take of $601,141,551, according to Hollywood.com. It achieved it on Oscar nominations day, February 2nd. This beats the $600,788,188 held by Titanic (though not adjusted for inflation or higher 3D ticket prices). Last week, Avatar crossed the $2 billion milestone in worldwide box office.
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Congratulations to Fox and the cast and crew.
I’m guessing Fox wishes they invested more than just 40%, no?
*coughinflationcough*
*cougheatithatercough*
*cough*youdidntactuallyrefutethepoint*cough*
I’ve been saving this comment that someone wrote here a few weeks ago just for this occasion – they shall remain nameless:
“If anyone here thinks “Avatar” is going to reach $600 million domestic, they’re delusional.”
$601,141,551 and counting…
My guess is ultimately a $700 million domestic take or higher, and, including international, a total theatrical gross of $2.5 Billion before this thing is done.
Stunning.
Ha! I wish I thought of that.
Yay.
I don’t want to hear about inflation for worldwide numbers at least no way to calculate true inflation of all thoise countries over time. An domestically avatar only been released once and only for 7 weeks so far. Amazing what it has done financially. Also for higher 3d prices it could be argued it stopped many people from seeing it more than once because of high price. So that argument can go both ways.
Yeah, I don’t buy that argument going both ways. The value of repeated viewers (necessary for any blockbuster of this size) must dramatically outweigh the incredibly tiny sliver of people who let an extra $2 or $3 stop them from viewing it again. That’s just not how people watch movies.
The inflation argument is just nonsense. We can, indeed, calculcate it for individual countries, and we don’t need total precision to know that it has a dramatic effect. You can adjust for the largest several markets, which make up the bulk of the film’s gross, and easily conclude that it doesn’t even crack the top 20.
Seriously, people, if you liked this vapid movie, to each their own. But let’s stop trying to pretend that the arguments against its gross being record-breaking are somehow lacking. They really aren’t. Inflation plays a huge role.
I can’t tell you how happy I was to read this article without the unadjusted, adjusted bullshit. Especially when the myth of Gone With The Wind has been thoroughly exposed.
Who exposed the ‘myth?’ GWTW’s numbers are monumental. It’s first release drew 52 million people, equal to 120 million today and that would amount to a billion plus. Its subsequent releases netted many millions more. These numbers are indeed mythological.
WoW –can Avatar push on to 2.5 Billion world wide? +DVD +cable +merchandising +3d tech +++
and then we have the Avatar 2 and 3 What a money maker.
James Cameron’s going to make how much from this Avatar franchise
Is this the figure accounting for inflation? I keep hearing all this hype about the biggest box office ever, almost immediately followed by “Oh, well not accounting for inflation.”
And if indeed these figures are not taking account for inflation, then what is the big deal? Just curious…
Inflation is a non-factor for this film. 3D ticket prices are higher, and according to the law of economics’ supply and demand, the demand should be lower, hence less gross, but it continues to make money. The studio doesn’t care about how much it would have gotten paid 13 years ago, so they don’t count inflation either. The question remains: If Titanic, the previous record holder came out today, would it make as much money? Considering how different technology and social lives are compared to 1997, with piracy, the internet boom, etc.
I think it is very simple actually. Numbers should be counted on tickets sold, not on ticket prices, which keep on getting more and more expensive. That is the only way to really measure a films success. How many people paid to see it. It is the way success for books, records and anything else in the universe is measured, because it is the only way it makes sense. Of course, in the case of movies, it isn’t, mostly because it is in the interest of studio executives to talk about bigger grosses and greater success to their shareholders and thus create the illusion they’re performing better. It is all transparent bullshit, and one of the big mysteries out there is why Nikki Finke, who debunks all the bullshit out there, keeps falling for this one, the greatest fallacy in the film industry. Other than that, yes, Avatar is a huge hit and nobody can dispute that. Hurray for Cameron and for the haters, well, get a life already.
Its a business. Its about how much money you make… stop with this tickets sold crap.
Dear God, are you serious? “Inflation is a non-factor”? This isn’t just wrong, it’s DEMONSTRABLY wrong. It’s mathematically wrong. This isn’t an opinion, dude.
Your reference to the law of supply and demand makes zero sense. You say it states that the gross should be lower because of higher ticket prices…but lower than WHAT? Lower than what it would have been if it cost less, not lower than some other film at some other point in time.
If you sold tickets for $1, the demand would be through the roof, but you wouldn’t make as much. If you sold them for $100, demand would be lower, but you’d make more on each ticket. The trick is to find the point at which you make the most.
Nobody cares if the studio cares about inflation, either. That’s not a relevant comparison, because what they spent to make and market it is different now than it would have been 13 years ago. The discussion is about whether or not it’s really the biggest grossing film of all time. The value of a dollar is relative and fluctuates, but over time diminishes nominally. This is an economic and mathematic fact. Or do you think there’s no particular reason that people make more these days, and candy bars don’t cost a nickel any more?
Good grief. This isn’t complicated, people.
Because Titanic’s record doesn’t take inflation into account either. Nothing will top Gone With the Wind, but that was a different era, when there weren’t as many media options. And, for the record, Avatar arrives in a different marketplace than Titanic left, so the same argument holds, to a smaller extent. This is simply the highest dollar amount, and is significant as such.
Where will it stop? If memory serves me correctly, theatre owners earn a larger percentage of the box office after the opening weekend. If so, as long as there’s demand you’ll see Avatar in theatres. Of the major non-chick flick films being released in February, only Percy Jackson isn’t rated R. I think the end range will be between $650 (it would have to plummet to earn that little) to $750 million (it has to drop eventually) domestic. Given it earns 70% overseas, worldwide between $2.2 to $2.5 billion.
I don’t understand the Avatar hate. It’s clear that it isn’t hype. Word of mouth doesn’t work that way. If it was hype, it would have had a 70% drop after opening weekend. While haters do not like it, clearly most of the audience does. Of course everyone has a right to their own opinion, I thought it was a pretty mediocre plot myself.
What depresses me about this whole thing is that the only thing studio heads will take away from it is the success of 3D. Or rather, the success of Avatar using 3D. They’ll still make movies based on toys, they’ll just be in 3D. Even with a movie grossing over $2 billion, they’ll still want to base everything on existing franchises. Battleship will be in 3D and it will still suck.
If I am selling apples this year for $10 and I sell two apples, but last year I was selling those same apples for $5 dollars, and sold three apples, which year did I sell more apples? There is such a thing called inflation. And in reality, Avatar is only 21st on the all time list and about $355m behind Titanic, not to mention $900 million behind Gone with the Wind. Now I get it, there was less competition back in the day with GWTW. But even Star Wars A New Hope sits at $1.3b. So talk to me when it makes a billion dollars. It should be about tickets sold, not inflated dollars earned. We get WAY too excited about this stuff.
You’re a loser Dolan. You act like someone is doing this to personally offend you. Get out much moron? Make love to many women?
So if theaters decided to sell a film for ten cents and one hundred million people take advantage, making ten million dollars, but another film sells for 20 dollars and ONLY ten million people see it, thus making 200 million, we should consider the first film more successful because it sold more tickets, even though the second film generated 2000% more revenue?
Go learn some fucking economics.
It’s the highest grossing film because it’s made more money than any other film. That’s it. That’s why. Stop being a fucking obtuse internet retard. No one is doing this to piss you off.
First thing’s first: if you have to swear and insult people to buttress the strength of your argument, you don’t have much of an argument.
Second, while you’re technically right about tickets sold being a bad measure, you’re just wrong about the rest. It’s laughable that you’d tell someone to learn economics, and then completely dismiss inflation, which is among the most basic and self-evident economic truths there is.
It’s not the highest grossing film in any measure that meaningfully compares one film’s box office success to another. It’s just not. If a film were released tomorrow, and at the same time everyone had 10 times as much money, and everything cost 10 times as much, and it broke records, we would all understand that it only did so because of that inflation. We would all understand that it didn’t have to be as successful in a real sense to pass some magical number. It would be easier than it was the day before.
Well, guess what? This kind of thing actually happens. It just happens gradually. The fact that this process happens gradually doesn’t change the truth of the situation; just people’s ability to understand and recognize it when they don’t bother to sit down and think it through.
Wow. I bring up a logical point, that is actually the current front page story on boxofficemojo.com (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2667&p=.htm) and you accuse me of not getting laid? Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.
I’m not offended as much as I just think it’s funny. Economics? It’s simple math. So far Avatar has sold 60 million ticket. Titanic sold 128 million tickets.
Avatar is a phenomenon. But my point is valid. Go read Brandon Gray’s article and see you at the Meat Market.
Seems to me that the people that are getting too excited about this are inflation/high 3D prices crowd. The dollar figure is the dollar figure. The U.S. didn’t change currency. $601 million is more than 600 million. That’s all it means. Of course there’s inflation. That’s a different list that someone can put together for dollar adjusted rankings. But this ranting about inflation as if some big lie is being perpetrated is childish. Avatar is a huge hit. It’s passed the box office total of Titanic, it’s still making money. Everyone and their cat knows that inflation has an impact, but there are other factors as well. This is just one way of looking at it. So shut the fuck up already.
Er, no. People shouldn’t shut up as long as other people keep saying “biggest ever.” Fact is, it’s incredibly misleading.
The fact that the U.S. didn’t change currency is completely flippin’ irrelevant. The value of our currency has changed. You’re right, though: inflation-adjusted gross is a different list. And guess what? It’s a better list for determining success and which films are actually breaking records. And that’s what people are saying when you tell them to “shut the fuck up.”
Also, can we please ditch the “hey, Avatar’s a huge success” non-point? No one’s denying it’s a success, so this doesn’t have any relevance to anything.
Avatar will soon have sold MORE tickets than the original Star Wars.
Star Wars sold an estimated 225,567,645 tickets worldwide in its original run (not counting the 1982 and 1997 rereleases).
Avatar in 47 days has sold an estimated 209,490,836 tickets worldwide and can be reasonably expected to reach 250,000,000 total tickets by the end of its run (the equivalent of another $401 million dollars).
Here’s how this was calculated. Star Wars grossed $503,015,849 worldwide in its original release at Box Office Mojo’s estimated ticket price of $2.23. I don’t know if that estimate applies to foreign ticket prices but it’s the best we got.
Box Office Mojo just posted an article with their own calculations, accounting for higher 3D and Imax prices, that estimates Avatar has sold 60,700,000 tickets in the U.S., at approximately a $9.90 average ticket price. I divided the foreign gross by that price and added it to the U.S. ticket sales.
Ipso facto, Avatar is BIGGER than Star Wars. Adjusted earnings for Jesus were not available at press time.
To be fair, Avatar is still a long ways off from Titanic which looks to have sold 401,568,904 tickets worldwide. Also, the two Star Wars rereleases (1982 and 1997) sold an additional 61,234,820 tickets.
The people who want to put special conditions on it, to try & reduce it’s achievments will still find ways to do so.
Never mind the fact that, with or withour inflation & higher ticket prices for 3D, it’s highly likely that Avatar will be number 1 at the box office agin this weekend, making it 8 straight weeks. Only two movies have done that since the 80′s; Home Alone & Titanic.
To compare a film with another, inflation must be considered. But worldwide too. The price of the ticket don’t matter? Wy Gone With The Wind didn’t sold tickets for US$ 10,00? Because nobody would pay. If a film is 3D and, consequently, more expensive, it’s natural to have expensives tickets.
Considering that, Avatar is in 4th place, behind GWTW (3,1 billion), Titanic (2,9 bi) and Star Wars (2,2 bi). I think Avatar will stop in 3th.
I don’t like Avatar and see it as the antithesis of what moviemaking and storytelling should be about…
But… gotta give the man his due. He figured out what the audience wants and delivered in spades.
Whether adjusted for inflation or not, the numbers are HUGE and say something not just about the movie business, but about what audiences want to see as well…
Avatar could run until summer at this rate. There really isn’t anything out there as a popcorn-must-see-movie to take it on.
The People whining about higher ticket prices for Avatar are the people who predicted the movie would tank, and are just still trying to lessen the embarassment to their ego. Yet will they suddenly give much more credit to rated G films like Hannah Montana, and Finding Nemo that do almost all of their business on matinee priced tickets? Where is the call to ticket differential inflation adjust for those movies?
EXACTLY…We have a winner and his name is John.
Amen, John. For the most part, these are people desperately trying to grind a dull political axe. The way they continue to backpedal and alter their arguments is amusing. “Avatar will be a disaster because Americans are tired of the liberal conspiracy! It won’t make $200 million… $250… uhm, $400… $600! And that’s it!… Inflation! It’s all about inflation!”
Jesus. Pathetic.
I hope IMAX doesn’t get rid of it altogether just to accomodate stupid Burton and Depp. Maybe give Alice the matinees and keep Avatar playing at night.
With Percy Jackson, Wolfman, Shutter Island, and Cop Out coming out in the next few weeks, Avatar will fall from Number 1. Alice is going to be huge. And it only has three weeks in the 3D and IMAX theaters so people who want to see it are going to be really irate if Avatar takes some of the screenings away.
@ Jack:
The only way they would do that is if Alice in Wonderland bombs big-time, and even then, Avatar would probably only get one matinee while Alice gets the rest of the schedule.
Don’t worry: Avatar will be back once IMAX works out some kind of deal with the studios where it can play older films without having to plan the re-release months in advance. Look at the IMAX schedule for this year: There’s nothing for almost two months between How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek 4. Once Dragon slows down, there’s at least a two-week space where films like Avatar could be utilized.
One way or another, Avatar will be back.
Everybody get a grip.
All records are somewhat varied subject to whatever terms you wish to apply. The same is true in sports. Does this really matter?
Avatar is fucking huge in any schematic or formula or whatever. There will never be any way to purely quantify this to satisfy everyone. Those who want it to be #1 will justify this, and those who don’t… won’t.
Can we, please, move on?
These stories are absolutely useless without adjusted figures included for comparison. Although nothing will beat Gone With The Wind’s $1.5 billion _adjusted_ domestic gross.
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm
Not getting laid either, Hank? That seems to be the case with those of us here who believe that the hype of the highest grossing film of all time moniker is flimsy at best.
For the record, I personally DO think Avatar will end up grossing 1 billion domestically. It’ll probably cross that around June.
But until it does that, we can’t REALLY consider it the highest grossing film of all time. Throw GWTW out. That’s like comparing Pujols to Ruth. But Star Wars made $1.3b adjusted. End of the day, that film is still number one domestically IMHO.
@ Untrustworthy Stranger:
No, the sad fact is that in the near future studios will hyper-produce movies with trite story lines and cardboard characters because of Avatar. The likelihood that many will be in 3D is just sauce for the goose.
This is great to finally see a film break that record. Adjusting for 3D shouldn’t be incorporated into the calculation- IMAX, 3D, Hi-Def screens or traditional screens should all count as “theater sales” as opposed to video sales.
Yeah it really should not matter how much a movie makes from ticket sales..it should matter HOW MANY tickets it actually sells. That is what essentially defines the greatness of a movie. It breaks my heart to see Avatar, a movie about some mythical futuristic alien world, beat Titanic both domestically and world-wide. Obviously, the story in Titanic never happened, but the fact that the movie incorporated an historical tragic event and a wonderous love story, shows what a masterpiece it really is. Even though Titanic didn’t make as much money as Avatar, its ticket sales far surpassed that of Avatar’s.
If Avatar grossed $3 billion DOMESTIC, people would still come up with some bullshit criteria why it’s still not the biggest movie in history. People who don’t like the movie will never chill out when they hear about its business numbers.
What we’re talking here is just that: business. Do fortune 500 quarterly earnings calls always have some guy standing up and saying, “Yeah profits may be up, but if you account for inflation and the higher prices of this new product, we’re not even close to the profits we showed in 1939!”? No. It’s business, it’s about the number on the bottom line and that’s it.
Inflation estimates are there for curiosity’s sake, but used as solid fact by people who don’t like the real numbers.
It’s not like I LIKE the idea of Avatar, Transformers 2 and Shrek 2 being some of the highest earning movies of all time, but they are, and there’s nothing anyone can say to change that. Piss about something more worthwhile, like it being 2010 and we still don’t have jetpacks for sale at WalMart.
“If Avatar grossed $3 billion DOMESTIC, people would still come up with some bullshit criteria why it’s still not the biggest movie in history.”
I don’t think they would, actually. And if they did, they’d be wrong.
“What we’re talking here is just that: business. Do fortune 500 quarterly earnings calls always have some guy standing up and saying, “Yeah profits may be up, but if you account for inflation and the higher prices of this new product, we’re not even close to the profits we showed in 1939!”? No. It’s business, it’s about the number on the bottom line and that’s it.”
Uh, they would say that if they were trying to figure out whether or not they’d been more successful this year than in 1939, yeah. Absolutely. Of course business is about the bottom line: and that bottom line is different depending on the value of currency. Otherwise moderately successful companies today would be considered more successful than borderline monopolies a hundred years ago.
“Inflation estimates are there for curiosity’s sake, but used as solid fact by people who don’t like the real numbers.”
No. Inflation-adjusted numbers *are* the real numbers. The meaningless ones are the ones that come in a world where everyone’s making three or four times as much and things cost three or four times as much.
It’s like some guy getting a high score on an arcade game, then all the point values being quadrupled, and then some other guy coming along and breaking that record. You’ve passed some completely arbitrary number, but it doesn’t mean you’ve achieved the same level of success. This isn’t rocket science.
Great Point, Trent. You are right, nobody talks like this in the real world. How often does anyone in the course of their daily life compare the current price of an item they want to buy with its 1939′s price to determine how affordable or expensive that particular item is? That is why this whole adjustment for inflation talk is so absurd because its not based in reality. Like it or not, Avatar has made a huge amount of money, these adjusted for inflation people need to accept that fact and move on.
For the record, if AVATAR grosses $3b, it will be number one. I won’t argue that. But the fact that it is technically 21st all time as of today in adjusted for inflation ticket price sales, well… that cannot be ignored.
@Dolan
How is the inflation adjusted gross relevant to a business discussion about the monetary success of Avatar? Trent made a great point that adjusting for inflation would be irrelevant in such a discussion. In business, one only cares about the money they made today and not the money the made in 1939′s dollars. For example, when you get your paycheck do you convert it to 1939 dollars to find out how much you actually make when adjusted for inflation? I assume no. Why not? Because such knowledge would be irrelevant to your current financial well-being in 2010. No one is arguing about the facts. There are a lot of different facts out there to analyze and consider. We only want to focus on the facts that are relevant to the discussion at hand.
As Jim Rome would say, SCOREBOARD.
Frak adjusted for inflation, global warming, health care reform. 601.2m is 601.2m. Avatar is now boxoffice king. End of story.
If I sold 3 apples last year for $5 each and I sold 2 this year for $10 each, then which year was I more successful? Well I guess that depends on whether you’re counting apples or money. Avatar has made more money than any other movie in history. At the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters. People who continue to argue that Titanic and GWTW are more successful than Avatar – despite Avatar’s record breaking performance in the domestic and international box office – have got their heads buried in the sand.
It depends on whether or not the price of everything else has gone up between the two years, obviously. Money isn’t some constant thing that has a timeless value. That’s what people aren’t getting. Money is not the same thing as actual wealth.
So, yes, Avatar wins the contest to acquire the highest physical number of pieces of paper that say “1″ and have George Washington’s picture on it. Congratulations. But that’s not the same thing as actually making the most money. It’d be like breaking Wilt’s 100-point single game record, but after they change the rules so every basket’s worth double.
We should get MORE excited about this: and we should adjust other movies for re-releases, and should adjust titanic, too, for lack of piracy: do you think that the people who went for the fifth, sixth, and tenth times fifteen weeks in would have done so if they had gotten a DVD screener ripped and available for download online? we’ll never know. here’s what we do know: this movie, “adjusted” only for inflation – which is a disadvantage to it and no other movie – will be one of the top 15 of all time – and unlike almost every other film in the top 15 will have done it without re-releases; will have done it in an era of television (seriously, GWTW was released at a time when there was nothing but movies if you wanted to watch something); in an era of massively fractured media; of DVDs; of home theatres that are amazing; of piracy; and will also have been number 1 for 7 or 8 weeks, at a time when even massive movies – Twilight, transformers – tend to be number one for only two weeks.
This is a huge achievement. Regardless, even adjusted, worldwide this movie has a chance of beating Titanic’s gross. Wow.
come on whiskey!! where’s the data showing avatar’s failure!?!