July
7
Gone with the Wind Knocks Titanic Off B.O. Chart, Dark Knight Leads Flickchart Rankings
Inflation is a huge factor in figuring out the best box office performers of all time. Bloomberg's new inflation-adjusted chart places Gone with the Wind at the top of the U.S. top box office list, along with Star Wars, The Sound of Music and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Where's the mighty number one b.o. grosser of all time, Titanic? After The Ten Commandments. Years ago, Variety's late A.D. Murphy told me the same thing: adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind handily beats every challenger.
Full Bloomberg b.o. chart is on the jump.
This reminds me of my current revelations on Flickchart, a new ranking site that doesn't ask you to rate movies with stars. No, it asks you to pick one movie over another. Most of the time it's easy to pick a good movie over a bad one, but as you play, you sometimes have to pick between two bad ones (hence The Da Vinci Code was high on my list at one point) or worse, between two good ones. How do you pick between Citizen Kane and Casablanca? I tend to be obsessive about this sort of thing. What if someone saw my chart with The Goonies or The Illusionist at number one? Toy Story recently beat out Braveheart at number one; it stayed there until Flickchart asked me to choose between Toy Story and something even better--Goodfellas.
I'm struck at how fast the entertaining blockbusters are moving up the chart--Pixar, James Bond, Spielberg, Burton, Zemeckis, Cameron, Hitchcock and The Godfather films. It doesn't surprise me that Lean, Kubrick, Welles, Kurosawa, the Coens, Scorsese and Wilder are strong, but The Exorcist and Zodiac are surprisingly high. Someone tweeted that Flickchart is like crack for movie addicts. Film School Rejects can't get enough. Neither can AICN's Mr. Beeks. Somebody stop me.
Here are Flickchart's top rankings, led by The Dark Knight over second place Star Wars.
Here's the Flickchart trailer:
================================================================================
Gross Gross
Rank Film Studio Adj* Unadj* Year
================================================================================
-------------------Top 25 Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation-------------------
1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,450.7 $198.7 1939
2 Star Wars Fox $1,278.9 $461.0 1977
3 The Sound of Music Fox $1,022.5 $158.7 1965
4 E.T. Universal $1,018.5 $435.1 1982
5 The Ten Commandments Paramount $940.6 $65.5 1956
6 Titanic Paramount $921.5 $600.8 1997
7 Jaws Universal $919.6 $260.0 1975
8 Doctor Zhivago MGM $891.3 $111.7 1965
9 The Exorcist Warner Bros. $793.9 $232.7 1973
10 Snow White Disney $782.6 $184.9 1937
11 101 Dalmatians Disney $717.4 $144.9 1961
12 The Empire Strikes Back Fox $704.9 $290.5 1980
13 Ben-Hur MGM $703.6 $74.0 1959
================================================================================
Gross Gross
Rank Film Studio Adj* Unadj* Year
================================================================================
14 Return of the Jedi Fox $675.3 $309.3 1983
15 The Sting Universal $640.0 $156.0 1973
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark Paramount $632.9 $242.4 1981
17 Jurassic Park Universal $619.0 $357.1 1993
18 The Graduate AVCO $614.4 $104.9 1967
19 Star Wars: Episode I - Fox $609.0 $431.1 1999
The Phantom Menace
20 Fantasia Disney $596.3 $76.4 1941
21 The Godfather Paramount $566.7 $135.0 1972
22 Forrest Gump Paramount $564.0 $329.7 1994
23 Mary Poppins Disney $561.3 $102.3 1964
24 The Lion King Buena Vista $554.5 $328.5 1994
25 Grease Paramount $552.3 $188.4 1978
for top grossing films in non-adjusted terms
================================================================================
Lifetime
Rank Film Studio Gross Year
================================================================================
-------------------------Top 25 Domestic Grossing Films-------------------------
1 Titanic Paramount $600.8 1997
2 The Dark Knight Warner Bros. $533.3 2008
3 Star Wars Fox $461.0 1977
4 Shrek 2 Dreamworks $441.2 2004
5 E.T. Universal $435.1 1982
6 Star Wars: Episode I - Fox $431.1 1999
The Phantom Menace
7 Pirates of the Caribbean: Buena Vista $423.3 2006
Dead Man’s Chest
8 Spider-Man Sony $403.7 2002
9 Star Wars: Episode III - Fox $380.3 2005
Revenge of the Sith
10 The Lord of the Rings: New Line $377.0 2003
The Return of the King
11 Spider-Man 2 Sony $373.6 2004
12 The Passion of the Christ Newmarket $370.8 2004
================================================================================
Lifetime
Rank Film Studio Gross Year
================================================================================
13 Jurassic Park Universal $357.1 1993
14 The Lord of the Rings: New Line $341.8 2002
The Two Towers
15 Finding Nemo Buena Vista $339.7 2003
16 Spider-Man 3 Sony $336.5 2007
17 Forrest Gump Paramount $329.7 1994
18 The Lion King Buena Vista $328.5 1994
19 Shrek the Third Pixar/Dreamwork $322.7 2007
20 Transformers Pixar/Dreamwork $319.2 2007
21 Iron Man Paramount $318.4 2008
22 Harry Potter and Warner Bros. $317.6 2001
the Sorcerer’s Stone
23 Indiana Jones and the Paramount $317.1 2008
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
24 The Lord of the Rings: New Line $314.8 2001
The Fellowship of the Ring
25 Star Wars: Episode II -Fox $310.7 2002
Attack of the Clones
================================================================================
Notes: *Adjusted gross refers to adjustment for ticket price inflation.
Source: Box Office Mojo. Boxofficemojo.com
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Anne,
Hi! This is Jeremy (Thompson, no relation) from Flickchart. Nathan Chase is my partner. We saw your article a few hours ago, and I thought I'd drop a quick email... first, to thank you for talking about us, which is really, really cool. Thanks!
The subject of which movies end up at the top of the charts over time is a rich one. Nathan and I discussed it a lot in the development of the site, the weighing of the system... and of course running the results of it all against our personal charts (I'm pretty sure mine's better, The 'Burbs notwithstanding). We especially wondered if the aggregate skews to, say, the entertaining blockbusters you mention in the article or generally to newer movies.
The Dark Knight at #1 on the charts tends to raise the eyebrows. I liked it quite a bit... but #1? Of all time? It definitely seems out of place. Yet, in looking at the number of people who have it at #1 on their individual lists - 213 - it doesn't seem out of line, given that only Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back have more (214 and 239 at the moment). We launched the site after chatting about how Pulp Fiction dominated Empire by 3 spots on IMDb's Top 250 list, thinking that it must be (at least in part) an issue of recentness: Pulp Fiction was already over 10 years old, but its popularity with our generation has had some staying power.
The Dark Knight sticks out on both our list and IMDb's, and like Pulp Fiction and the LOTR trilogy before it, it'll no doubt fall a bit over the next year or two. But using the others there as examples, it looks like time will probably regard it well, at least in the medium term. It seems like the newness doesn't MAKE the movie, but it definitely makes a very good film even better. If nothing else, I guess people love to feel like they just saw a modern classic.
I'd love to dig in and see that same short-to-medium term trend over the past century.
We're really glad to see you liking Flickchart. We've got a lot more on the way, so I hope you'll stick around. Thanks again for the mention!
Sincerely,
Jeremy Thompson
Co-Founder, Flickchart.com
P.S. If you'd like even non-Flickchart users to be able to see our global chart, you can link to it directly at http://www.flickchart.com/charts .
Posted by: Jeremy Thompson | July 08, 2009 at 05:41 PM