INFINITY WAR, Biggest Grossing Movie Sits 50th In This Chart!

Today's news is that Avenger's Infinity War is going to be sitting at the top of the 2018 charts of blockbusters with $1.8B worldwide (ww) in ticket sales! That's pretty impressive, as the film just toppled Black Panther, which netted $1.3B ww.

(Note, I put these lists & numbers together a few weeks ago. This piece is about making a point, not for the exact numbers that the films are sitting in at this moment, so I have not made a huge effort to update to 'today's' updates.)

After it's opening weekend, Deadpool 2 already sits 10th in this list of 2018 films, with $301M! Dang, not bad for a sarcastic ass mutant hero. (Today it sits THIRD with $655M!)

			Millions
Rank		Title	Worldwide
1		Avengers: Infinity War	$1,817.30
2		Black Panther	$1,343.90
3		Operation Red Sea	$579.20
4		Ready Player One	$576.90
5		Detective Chinatown 2	$544.10
6		Rampage (2018)	$407.40
7		Fifty Shades Freed	$368.30
8		Monster Hunt 2	$361.70
9		Peter Rabbit	$335.70
10		Deadpool 2	$300.40
11		A Quiet Place	$296.40
12		Pacific Rim Uprising	$288.50

{http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2018&p=.htm}

For all-time worldwide box office numbers, Avatar still holds the number one spot, which is pretty impressive for a 2009 film,  considering that's an "unadjusted for inflation" number! And the first Avengers film sits 6th, Infinity War: 4th.

In this list, Infinity War sits 4th. in this worldwide sorted list, for the moment.

			Billions	Millions
Rank		Title	Worldwide	Domestic / %
1		Avatar	$2,788.00	$760.50	27.30%
2		Titanic	$2,187.50	$659.40	30.10%
3		Star Wars: The Force Awakens	$2,068.20	$936.70	45.30%
4		Avengers: Infinity War	$1,817.30	$595.80	32.80%
5		Jurassic World	$1,671.70	$652.30	39.00%
6		Marvel's The Avengers	$1,518.80	$623.40	41.00%
7		Furious 7	$1,516.00	$353.00	23.30%
8		Avengers: Age of Ultron	$1,405.40	$459.00	32.70%
9		Black Panther	$1,343.90	$697.80	51.90%
10		Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2	$1,341.50	$381.00	28.40%
11		Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$1,332.50	$620.20	46.50%
12		Frozen	$1,276.50	$400.70	31.40%
13		Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$1,263.50	$504.00	39.90%
14		The Fate of the Furious	$1,236.00	$226.00	18.30%
15		Iron Man 3	$1,214.80	$409.00	33.70%

{ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ }

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But...

Infinity War Sits Fiftieth In This Chart!

But when you adjust for inflation... you know... 50 cent tickets versus $15 dollar tickets, it is a very very different chart we end up looking at.  When you adjust for inflation, and break it down to the number of tickets sold for a movie... things get very very different.

I've had debates about which is a more valuable measuring stick... ticket cost and box office "records" vs. number of tickets sold (Adjusted for inflation is another but same measure).

(The following is just a huge, embellished example to make my point - - -)

Some folks are hands-down, blindly convinced that it's about the money spent on a film today and the studio take that helps set the rank of a movie. But with inflation, there will always be a box office record being set.

Then I think this: Some day, when Friday The 13th chapter 1000 hits theaters a thousand years from now, it will "out sell" Avatar, Titanic, Harry Potter, The Matrix and everything else down the road ONLY because of inflationary impact on the dollar. Not because it was that great of a movie that appealed to the general movie audience.

Because I can see Friday the 13th out-selling everyone down the the road in time, and shaking my head because of it, I decided to turn to looking at just how many tickets were sold for a movie, or, adjusting for inflation. To me, this is the true measure of a film.

With that in mind, our top chart looks very very different.

Rank		Title (click to view)	Est. Tickets		Year
1		Gone with the Wind	202,044,600		1939
2		Star Wars	178,119,600		1977
3		The Sound of Music	142,415,400		1965
4		E.T.	141,854,300		1982
5		Titanic	135,549,800		1997
6		The Ten Commandments	131,000,000		1956
7		Jaws	128,078,800		1975
8		Doctor Zhivago	124,135,500		1965
9		The Exorcist	110,599,200		1973
10		Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	109,000,000		1937
11		Star Wars: The Force Awakens	108,115,100		2015
12		101 Dalmatians	99,917,300		1961
13		The Empire Strikes Back	98,180,600		1980
14		Ben-Hur	98,000,000		1959
15		Avatar	97,309,600		2009
16		Return of the Jedi	94,059,400		1983
17		Jurassic Park	91,621,800		1993
18		Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace	90,312,100		1999
19		The Lion King	89,146,400		1994
20		The Sting	89,142,900		1973
21		Raiders of the Lost Ark	88,543,400		1981
22		The Graduate	85,576,800		1967
23		Fantasia	83,043,500		1941
24		Jurassic World	79,049,200		2015
25		The Godfather	78,922,600		1972
26		Forrest Gump	78,614,600		1994
27		Mary Poppins	78,181,800		1964
28		Grease	76,969,200		1978
29		Marvel's The Avengers	76,881,200		2012
30		Black Panther	76,177,400		2018
31		Thunderball	74,800,000		1965
32		The Dark Knight	74,463,500		2008
33		The Jungle Book	73,679,900		1967
34		Sleeping Beauty	72,676,100		1959
35		Ghostbusters	71,173,700		1984
36		Shrek 2	71,050,900		2004
37		Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	70,557,900		1969
38		Love Story	69,998,100		1970
39		Spider-Man	69,484,700		2002
40		Independence Day	69,268,900		1996
41		Home Alone	67,734,200		1990
42		Star Wars: The Last Jedi	67,594,900		2017
43		Pinocchio	67,403,300		1940
44		Cleopatra (1963)	67,183,500		1963
45		Beverly Hills Cop	67,150,000		1984
46		Goldfinger	66,300,000		1964
47		Airport	66,111,300		1970
48		American Graffiti	65,714,300		1973
49		The Robe	65,454,500		1953
50		Avengers: Infinity War	64,959,900		2018
51		Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	64,628,400		2006

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{ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm?adjust_yr=1&p=.htm  }

This list is truly a list of classics, seeing how many times a movie drew in movie-goers to seats in a theater...

All I'm saying is that with inflation, the box office record will continually be broken, making it a great marketing sound byte for whatever film breaks this record. But it's a bit of a dupe, kind of like when California labels some lottery distributers "lucky sellers." There's no such thing gang, just sheer momentum of numbers that can be manipulated to pitch the product.

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