Should records be based on number of tickets sold or $$$$$ made?

Question

When a movie sets records at the box office, should they be based on the number of tickets the movie sells or the amount of money it makes? For instance, people that went to see Star Wars paid a LOT less per ticket than people do today. But if you go a web site like Boxofficemojo.com, they adjust ticket sales for inflation.

Something like Star Wars, that made about 400 million during it's releases (more than one release) into theater, would clear over a billion if the same amount of tickets were sold at todays prices. While a movie like "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" would drop from the third highest "grossing" movie in the U.S. to 47th comparitively.

So should these records be based on the numbers of tickets sold, instead of the revenue from expensive ticket prices?

The reason I'm asking is because many movies today are mediocre at best but they are topping our charts simply because it costs so much to go see them. Giving crappy movies those sort of praises only encourages more bad movies! Let's make them earn their record breaking numbers!

Answer 1

these records are the most meaningless figures ever.

coming from someone with experience working on some relatively high budget films:

international theatrical re-release of Star Wars (100's of millions)
Bean (over 100 million worldwide)
Big Lebowski (cult hit)
The Game (big names)
Romeo and Juliet

i know.. all in the 90's, but i went to television after those...

anyway- all i have to say is the numbers you read about in the paper are almost always completely arbitrary. the numbers are reported in most cases from the movie production company and NOT always come directly from theater box office revenue so to be honest i never put a whole lot of stock into those figures.

i'm an accountant taboot!

good movies speak for themselves, these records .... well, let me put it this way- if i don't see financial receipts from the theaters i don't believe a word of it.

specifically, the movie Bean was said to gross insane amounts of money but the numbers were clearly padded by grammercy pictures and i know it to be fact. does the common moviegoer care? probably not. but from my perspective it is not as good of a system as you would believe it to be.

in hollywood? go figure.

Answer 2

Good question. The box office only measures the dollar amount of tickets sold, without considering for inflation and no of tickets. They do per screen average for a movie, I personally think that's a better gauge of how much the movie's liked.

Answer 3

Since movie tickets all are about the same price for new releases, it would indicate what the attendance was.

And movies aren't about popularity (i.e. the amount of people that have seen them), they're about making money (i.e. how much money they spent on their viewing pleasure), bottom line.

Answer 4

Let's stop wasting our money on the crap Hollywood is consistently putting out so their movies can't break any records.