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THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Set Visit Preview and 4 Awesome New Posters!AVATAR Achieves The Highest Worldwide Gross of All Time with $1.84 Billion
by Brendan Bettinger Posted:January 25th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
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For some time now, its been a foregone conclusion that Avatar would surpass Titanic to become the highest grossing film of all time worldwide. Now it’s official, as The Hollywood Reporter puts the technological wonder at an estimated global total of $1.8437 billion, just ahead of Titanic‘s worldwide total of $1,843,201,268. Domestically, Avatar is still about $48 million behind Titanic‘s astounding $600.8 million pull more than a decade ago, but that record will likely fall before month’s end.
Such an accomplishment is truly amazing, but Avatar‘s ticket sales have benefited from rising ticket prices as well as surcharges associated with 3D and IMAX showings; the number of people who have actually visited the theater to see Avatar is still far less than the number who saw Titanic. I tried to put together a rough estimate of just how large this gap is after the jump.
Box Office Mojo does have a handy (though imperfect) chart which estimates an inflation-adjusted ranking of film’s highest grossers. Gone With the Wind and Star Wars, which have capitalized on multiple theatrical releases, top the list, while Titanic is #6 and Avatar is #26. Unfortunately, it only covers domestic releases, so it does not take into account the tremendous international business of both Titanic and Avatar. Thankfully, unlike Gone With the Wind or Star Wars, Titanic has only had one release in theaters (from December 1997 to September 2008), which will make it much easier to compare James Cameron’s two blockbusters.
I would like to stress that this will be a very rough estimate of tickets sold, and I don’t expect it to be particularly accurate.
The average U.S. ticket price over Titanic‘s release was somewhere between $4.60-$4.70. Because I don’t have access to average international ticket prices, I’m going to assume that international ticket prices have risen at approximately the same rate as domestic prices, and the U.S. average can be extended to all tickets sold. At this average, Titanic‘s worldwide gross translates into about 390-400 million tickets sold.
Calculating Avatar‘s tickets is somewhat trickier. The Hollywood Reporter listed some useful data: $134 million comes from IMAX locations at about $15 per ticket, and at least 65% of overseas tickets and 80% of domestic tickets were sold for 3D showings. From this, I estimated the following breakdown of Avatar‘s total gross:
-$1.147 billion from 3D
-$563 million from 2D
-$134 million from IMAX
The average ticket price for 2009 (and January 2010) is $7.35. From what I can tell, the 3D surcharge is typically between $2-$4. Because I don’t know what the average surcharge may be, I estimated that the average non-IMAX 3D ticket price is about $10. For the average IMAX ticket price, I used the number given by The Hollywood Reporter, $15.
All in all, my methods resulted in an estimate of about 200 million tickets sold to a theatrical showing of Avatar. This is about half of the 400 million estimated tickets sold for Titanic. Again, this is a very rough estimate, but I think the point is valid. Despite Avatar‘s enormous box office draw, it has a long way to go before it is quite the cultural phenomenon that Titanic was.
Of course, Avatar has been in theaters less than two months, so it may very well catch up to Titanic. But theatrical viewing patterns have evolved since 1997, and may no longer permit such an anomaly as Titanic, which topped the box office for 15 straight weeks. All that said, I am in awe of Avatar: it will be the first film to make $2 billion, a number I can barely wrap my head around.
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Related Links
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We'll see, I think there are a lot of people who still haven't even seen the movie and a lot more who are still seeing it again. I've only seen it once but might take my dad to see it sometime next week when I get my check in I-MAX, several people I know have seen it 3 or 4 times but then several more haven't even seen it once yet.
If it wins the Oscars I expect we'll be seeing a few more people getting their tails to the theaters to watch it.
Awesome news, this happened sooner than I had guessed. Thanks for the info Brendan.
We're all cheering for Avatar to be the top domestically at http://www.Naviblue.com
I don't buy the arguments about inflation and adjusted ticket prices. If the tickets are more expensive, shouldn't the film theoretically, especially in a bad economy be doing LESS business? If this were a good economy, even more people would be seeing it possibly. So really, the higher ticket prices are not keeping people away, as they should. People are paying the for tickets incredibly, and they're doing it multiple times. All this with a film that is an original property (not based on comic book, sequel, remake, etc.) and is science-fiction, that is incredible. The studio gets paid in 2010 dollars too by the way, not 1998 dollars, so they don't care about attendance, but about how much money is coming in. Today, there are so many more entertainment possibilities for kids on the internet, cell phones and video games, whereas there was less in 1997, so a lot more people went to the movies.
Excellent article. I too am in awe of this movie. I can't even fathom $2 billion. In-freaking-sane.
I've seen it twice in 3D and pays $20 per ticket here in Norway. Of course, this is the most expensive country in the world…
The problem is with this method that here in Hungary the ticket price was 790 HUF for Titanic (I have the ticket:) and now is 1800 HUF (IMAX 3D). And we have a really bad economy compared to Western European countries where you can count less than this inflation rate.
I think John Doe makes a damn good point. With this economy and the higher ticket prices (which no-one is forced to pay as they can easily see Avatar in 2D) isnt this film's success even more incredible?
And I find it interesting that no-one mentions that the overall cinema going audiance is much smaller today compared with the 1970s, nevermind the damn 1930s! Lets keep in mind that in the wake of Star Wars Hollywood started to gear most of their big films to kids and young adults, thus many older people (40s-60s and up) very rarely go to the cinema these day, if ever. My Mom and uncle rarely ever go, and my grandparents probably cant remember when they went to the cinema its been so long.
The amazing thing Titanic, and now Avatar, has done is get people that would normally never go to the cinema to go….
I think the real point to be made is that Avatar could up until around now hardly sell anymore tickets anyways. I-MAX is still selling out, some 3D showings are still selling out at night. Even if they wanted to they couldn't sell more tickets than they have thus far not by much anyways.
But we all know money is all that matters lol, and 4x investment return on your production budget/marketing campaign from box office gross is great, no matter what decade your from. (especially with how big the budget was)
The point with the inflation is to point out that AVATAR isn't quite the phenomenon its box office would suggest. I was only eleven when TITANIC came out, but I was literally the only person I knew who didn't see it. Everyone else at school saw it. Everyone in my family saw it. AVATAR? I know about five people who have seen it.
I understand that AVATAR fans are desperate to make this seem like the biggest thing in history, but it's just not. Who cares how much money it makes? I benefit in no way from that. I am interested in how many people are seeing it, and if that number were overwhelming, I'd probably sit up and take note. But it's only overwhelming relative to the modern moviegoing habit, which, sadly, is quite underwhelming.
Perhaps, but its box-office reign isn't over and Titanic sat in the box-office for a VERY long time. It could easily pull in another 100 million viewers before it ends for all we know [with its weekend grosses still fairly high].
I think a lot of people will definitely catch it on dvd, which to me is dumb. But do what you will I guess.
JohnDoe and southafricanguy ++
I guess it all depends how you want to measure success. To the studios, of course, $ is $. To the movie going public? Well, don't forget this is a movie about blue aliens.
That's supposed to be genre and niche. People who don't look forward to sci fi movies are eagerly viewing this movie. In the end, it's hugely successful in many ways.
My wife and I have been trying to get together with others to see it again in IMAX and all of us want to go, but getting the time right –babysitting, matching schedules– and then actually beating the sell-out has been very tough. I'm guessing this movie still has legs.
We need to see the real ticket sales not the dollar amount. Inflation has skewed this number by far. Gone with the Wind is still number 1 with inflation adjusted. NOW counting into the different aspects of the movie's gross. Back in 1939 you didn't have home video. Titanic came out when tickets were $5 per adult. Today you have variant ticket prices due to the 3D vs the 2D screen showings by about $4. The value of the dollar REALLY has to come into play here. Avatar is by far NOT the number 1 movie. The number of ticket sales is THE key number in all of this. Now saying all of this I am in no way bashing the movie. Nor do I think it is the best film ever made. It's such a basic storyline shot with the best technology available. I can see how it's doing well mainly it looks different and people haven't seen this kind of imagery on screen before BUT the story has been told many times before. I will be very surprised if it wins oscars for categories outside the technical ones.
Prepare to be surprised then. It is almost guaranteed the Oscar for Best Picture, and possibly Best Director as well. On a whole it is a fairly quality film, the script isn't omg-amazing but it is nevertheless well constructed, the rest of it is top notch. Good acting, good directing, good special effects, good music (though totally copied off Troy), pretty good progression. The only weak point I noticed was the lack of character development and for a sci-fi it is pretty light on background story (perhaps that is why they did so well).
If they make a sequel it had better include more information about the conditions of Earth and Earthlings.
We need to see the real ticket sales not the dollar amount. Inflation has skewed this number by far. Gone with the Wind is still number 1 with inflation adjusted. NOW counting into the different aspects of the movie's gross. Back in 1939 you didn't have home video. Titanic came out when tickets were $5 per adult. Today you have variant ticket prices due to the 3D vs the 2D screen showings by about $4. The value of the dollar REALLY has to come into play here. Avatar is by far NOT the number 1 movie. The number of ticket sales is THE key number in all of this. Now saying all of this I am in no way bashing the movie. Nor do I think it is the best film ever made. It's such a basic storyline shot with the best technology available. I can see how it's doing well mainly it looks different and people haven't seen this kind of imagery on screen before BUT the story has been told many times before. I will be very surprised if it wins oscars for categories outside the technical ones.
Prepare to be surprised then. It is almost guaranteed the Oscar for Best Picture, and possibly Best Director as well. On a whole it is a fairly quality film, the script isn't omg-amazing but it is nevertheless well constructed, the rest of it is top notch. Good acting, good directing, good special effects, good music (though totally copied off Troy), pretty good progression. The only weak point I noticed was the lack of character development and for a sci-fi it is pretty light on background story (perhaps that is why they did so well).
If they make a sequel it had better include more information about the conditions of Earth and Earthlings.
just how can i just get FEW DOLLARS FROM SOMEBODY