Avatar has become the fastest film ever to achieve one billion dollars in ticket sales around the world:
It does seem to be doing rather well but it would be interesting to know how much of the box office takings are due to the extra you have to pay for the 3d? Would it be the 2nd biggest film if the tickets were the same price?
I guess that has probably helped it. The odeon prices are about £7 for a non discounted normal ticket and £9 for a 3d ticket. If the current film takings are entirely made up of 3d tickets (obviously that won’t be true but I imagine the majority are) the equivalent takings for a 2D film would have been $883 000 000 putting it 15th in the world wide box office charts. That’s obviously only a minimum position so an accurate calculation would almost certainly put it a quite a few places higher.
I suppose you could also argue that if the other films had been shown with 3D ticket prices fewer people would have come.
There is confusion between million and billion in the Empire article:
“… pushing its worldwide haul to $1.14 million, besting the $1.1 million that Peter Jackson managed between 2003 and 2004.”
They’ve also messed up the figures for addition:
“$37.4 million in the States and $760.9 million around the rest of the world”
which they add together to give:
“$1.14 million sic]”
Guess that was meant to be $374 million?!
It’s now topped Titanic to become the highest grossing film of all time, and that’s even before filmsoc show it :!: To make matters better, it’s even had a mountain named after it :!:
The complete list is available at:
Wow. :shock: I never thought Titanic’s record would be beaten.
I found an inflation adjusted chart (it only covers the US but it’s still quite interesting).
Gone with the Wind is top with Avatar all the way down in 26th (but still the highest ranked film of the last 10 years). Only one Harry Potter film and two Pirates of the Caribbean films in the top 100.
Here’s the top 10:
1 Gone with the Wind (1939)
2 Star Wars (1977)
3 The Sound of Music (1965)
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
5 The Ten Commandments (1956)
6 Titanic (1997)
7 Jaws (1975)
8 Doctor Zhivago (1965)
9 The Exorcist (1973)
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
I too had been trying to find an adjusted list, but failed. What I did find, and really quite like, is the yearly bestsellers list below:
It puts Gone with the Wind’s takings into real perspective when you look at the best film takings in the years before and (admittedly, war allowing) after. Indeed, not until 1972 did another film take over $100,000,000 :!:
Over 70 times the takings of the previous year’s best! For Avatar to do that to The Dark Knight would mean taking over $70 billion dollars. :shock: