150 thoughts on “All Time Top Ticket Selling Movies”

1. Here are the top movies worldwide of all time based on ticket sales and as a percentage of world population

   https://adsp2p.net/docs/mostPopularMovies.html

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2. Much as I enjoy scanning your yearly reviews and this table of “All time top ticket selling movies”, I am nagged by certain questions. Most movies were sold at the average ticket price of the time and did not receive major reissues. Thus taking the boxoffice of the year of release and dividing it by the average ticket price that year gives a pretty accurate picture of its rank for the year, all-time $ rank and ticket sales. But in the case of movies such as Gone with the Wind and the early Disney animated movies each one had numerous successful reissues. Do your tables include re-issue revenue and adjust it for the price they were sold in each year which could be about double the average price of that year? And in the 50s and 60s many movies earned most of their boxoffice by being sold as roadshow (reserved seat) attractions (eg. The Sound of Music and Ben-Hur), again at about double the average ticket price of their year of release. In other words, when you calculate top ticket-sellers, as opposed to boxoffice takings, if there were two movies with identical boxoffice, but one was a roadshow, do you calculate the actual number of tickets of the roadshow as only half as many as the one sold at “regular price”? If not, the position of the roadshow in the list of top ticket sellers is much higher than is justified, is it not?

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   1. Along those lines, Avatar’s box office numbers was based on selling 3D and IMAX 3D tickets at three to four times the ticket price of any 2D film. If ticket sales is just a calculation of box office divided by average ticket price it would way overestimate the number of actual tickets sold. But if all that is ever reported is dollar values then ticket counts would seem to be impossible to figure out. Even just for Avatar, there would be theaters with sales at multiple prices at the same theater at the same time. This doesn’t take anything away from Avatar as a blockbuster, it made money, but I’d expect that sort by A.B.O., and sort by tickets, should result in some movies changing rankings on the list.

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3. TOP 25 FAVOURITE ENTRIES: STILLS

   1/Capt Jack Sparrow
   2/Indie and his father!
   3/Ghost
   4/Joker
   5/Rogue One
   6/Hobbit 2012
   7/Forrest Gump
   8/Spidey 2002
   9/Heath Ledger
   10/Skyfall
   11/Frozen 2
   12/Two Towers – great!
   13/Mary Poppins
   14/”I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse!”***
   15/Lion King
   16/Avengers Assemble
   17/Jurassic World 2015
   18/Dr Zhivago
   19/The Force Awakens
   20/Ben Hur
   21/ET
   22/Avengers Endgame
   23/RIP poor Carrie – those were the days!
   24/Titanic
   25/”Frankly my dear I don’t give a d**n!”

   ***First uttered by The Duke in a low budget B western in his early days – but the snobs were not interested back then whereas after it became famous in Godpop there was even a hit record with the line as its title.

   I notice that only the first 5 entries have less than a $billion. We are on the brink of the era where to be in the Top 100 worldwide grosses a movie has to be also in the $billion club, which probably means that at some stage the Top 100 will be substantially crowded out by these action/super hero franchises!

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4. TOP 25 FAVOURITE ENTRIES: POSTERS

   1/Pirates of Caribbean 2003
   2/Terminator 2
   3/Hobbit 2
   4/Raiders of Lost Ark
   5/two for Aladdin
   6/Spiderman 3
   7/Rogue One
   8/Capt Marvel
   9/Transformers 4
   10/Dark Knight Rises
   11/Beauty & Beast
   12/Transformers 3
   13/Jurassic World 2018
   14/Iron Man 3
   15/The Last Jedi
   16/Lord of the Rings 2001
   17/The Graduate- unusual one.
   18/Lion King
   19/Empire Strikes Back
   20/The Force Awakens
   21/Jaws
   22/Avatar
   23/Both for Titanic
   24/25 Unique ones [to me] for Chucks 10 Cmmts and Ben Hur

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5. We Have discussed the conflicting worldwide grosses quoted for The Godfather 1972. Your adjusted worldwide gross of around $1.525 billion based presumably on ticket sales equates to an actual figure of around $285 million back in 1972 which is the approximate top figure quoted by Wikipedia and one other source.

   According to the Consumer Price Index [CPI] of the US Bureau of Labor Stats $285 million earned in 1972 would today have the purchasing power of just short of $1.8 billion [at 2019 prices]

   If your figures ARE based on ticket sales, the difference between your $1.525 billion for Godpop and CPI’s $1.8 billion would be explained by the fact, known to me for some time now, that between 1972 and 2019/20 ticket prices have inflated at a slower rate than general prices; the reverse was dramatically the case during the classic era.

   For example between 1945 and 2019 ticket inflation increased at nearly twice the rate overall of general price inflation. Esther Williams’ Thrill of a Romance earned $12 million domestically in 1945 according to WH and he quite correctly adjusts that figure to around $325 for ticket inflation. However $12 million in 1945 would have the purchasing power today of just approx $175 million [$173.4 to be exact] according to CPI.

   I found you video interesting as both a statistical exercise and a further pictorial summary of the 100 highest grossing films, this time worldwide, and it gave me personal satisfaction worth a 98% rating. My selections this time round are in Parts 2 and 3.

   Anyway it’s good to see you taking an interest, albeit late in the day, in box office stats. As Paul Henried said to Bogie at the end of Casablanca “With you on our side this time I know we’ll win!” [I like Humph very much, but I sometimes wish that Paul had said that to Laddie!]

   LADD FAN [In fan magazine] “Alan is the kind of screen hero whom, if you were in trouble and looked behind you, it would be comforting to see standing there.”

   SON o BOB “Yes, but you’d have to look down first!”

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   1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and trivia, always appreciated.

      Glad you liked the posters and stills, I don’t think there are lobby cards this time.

      At the end of the day this is all informed guesswork, Bruce and I might be dead on with our calculations or laughably way off.

      At best our charts give a useful insight into the movies that have most effectively succeeded in attracting the largest amount of people to line up at theaters (UK = cinemas) over the decades. It’s not perfect because many oldies do not have foreign grosses readily available.

      One website insists that Gone With the Wind has an adjusted gross of $7bn which is ridiculous, all they did was take the total gross of all the reruns and convert from 1939 to 2019. But where would GWTW be on the chart if it was never re-released? What was it’s initial 1939-1940 box office earnings?

      Like you mention in your post, blockbuster movies have to make at least a billion dollars these days to be considered really successful. Star Wars 9 has still not passed $1bn which must be making Disney a little jittery. They have many more SW movies planned for the future.

      Avengers Endgame cost $350m to make which is a crazy amount of money, it needed to pass $1bn to be profitable. It was worth it, grossing about $2.7bn in total. Eventually movies will pass the £3bn milestone in grosses. 🙂

      Next video will be next monday and it’s another top 100.

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