That's a Lot of Popcorn

Ever wonder how the sales figures for today's movies stack up against the classics? We can read that The Dark Knight has cleared more than a half a billion dollars since its release last year, but how does that compare to movies released twenty, thirty or even more years ago? The dollar figures are higher today, but what about inflation?

Box Office Mojo has a page that charts the all-time box office figures for movies adjusted for inflation -- they took attendance figures for movies and multiplied them by the average ticket price of a movie today. This just charts domestic box office, by the way -- international sales change the figures somewhat.

Going by that chart, Dark Knight cracks the top 30, but way way down there at No. 27. Only two other movies made in the last 10 years are in the top 30, Shrek 2 at No. 30 and The Phantom Menace at No. 19. That last one proves that a movie doesn't have to be any good to make a lot of money, which may surprise people unless they've seen a movie.

The top box-office draw of all time hit screens 70 years ago. When released, Gone With the Wind made nearly $200 million. Adjusted, that's almost $1.5 billion, with a "B." Granted, that's only about .15 percent of the money that Congress wants to take away from you and me to give to...everybody but you and me, but it's still some serious coin. Especially considering that 1939 was in the Great Depression.

Gone With the Wind and several of the Disney animated features on the list have an advantage in that they were released into theaters more than once. On the other hand, that meant people went to see them again when they were re-released, so they must have had some appeal.

I imagine that DVDs and other methods of watching movies at home would make it tough to have the same thing happen these days. If Warner Bros. put The Dark Knight back into theaters in, say, 2013, would it pull the same as some of those older movies did when they returned to the screen? Once a film comes out on a medium where we can have it at home and watch it whenever we want, it would seem there'd be less reason to troop to the theater and pay for it again. So Gone With the Wind may remain the all-time champ in this arena.

But tomorrow is another day.