This chart lists movies ranked by the number of movie tickets sold in the United States¹.

This is not the same as "box office receipts adjusted for inflation" because not all movie tickets cost the same. In particular, many movies are seen by a greater number of children, or are seen more often during matinees or with discount (frequent buyer) tickets. Such movies sell more tickets per million dollars of box office receipts than other movies showing alongside them.

Please read the section after the chart for the list of sources I used in my research, and a brief description of how the table was created. In particular I want to point out that data is incomplete for movies before the 1960's.

Recent movies (which includes re-releases even if the original release is not recent) are in bold. The studio abbreviations and notes are listed at the bottom.

To receive a rank number, a newly-released (2008) movie would have to gross at least $253.8 million at the box office.

Studios:
BV Buena Vista
DW DreamWorks
Fox includes 20th Century Fox
MMax Miramax
NL New Line
Para Paramount
Sony
Univ Universal
WB Warner Brothers

Notes:
AA: This film received an Academy Award® for Best Picture.
n: This film was nominated for an Academy Award® in the Best Picture category.
M: This film has been released more than once (or has been showing every year since its release, in the case of Rocky Horror); the admission total shown here is the total for all release years. In all such cases, the box office for each year was adjusted for inflation separately before adding the years together.

Method

In order to generate these figures (which are only estimates) I had to take many factors into account.

Box office gross figures are the easiest statistic to find. However, many movies have been released more than once and it is very important to find out how much the movie grossed in each different year, because the ticket prices differ from one year to the next. Also, for older movies the box office gross is itself an estimate, because exhibitors (theatres) and studios didn't really keep consistently accurate records on this type of thing until the 1970's.

Adjusted box-office gross figures come from Exhibitor Relations (see below) and account for changes in movie ticket prices (not the "consumer price index", which varies at a different rate).

Current and historical movie ticket prices are published by the Motion Picture Association of America (the MPAA) in their annual report (see below) but for years not mentioned in their report I had to derive estimated ticket prices from the adjusted and unadjusted box office gross figures. Note that these prices might seem low because they include subsequent runs, senior and child discounts, and special pricing.

MPAA ratings are available for movies that received a rating, a process that began around 1968. They are used to estimate child attendance ratios (children throw off the numbers because they pay less). For unrated movies a guess is made as to how much child attendance the movie would have gotten, using other more recent movies as a guide, and assuming that for older movies the audience was generally more balanced because of the lack of ratings and enforcement.

Sources for general information about movies were used to learn more about what movies attract what types of audiences, and to learn about movies whose studios have placed restrictions on discount ticket sales.

All of this information is used to compile a database of movies, each with an average ticket price index (which varies depending on the movie's audience demographics) and a total adjusted gross figure (which properly adjusts the grosses in each year the movie made money). Then, the attendance estimate is computed simply by dividing one by the other.

Future Improvements:

- Some data is lacking for years before 1960, and even more data is lacking for years before 1940.

- I want to find a comprehensive list of movies that have been released with restrictions on discount tickets. While many films restrict discounts during the first few weeks of release, a few restrict discounts during a much longer period.

- I am also in search of information that will help improve estimates of matinee attendance rates and attendance by seniors.

Things That Will (Probably) Never Change:

- Expanding the data to a global (worldwide) context. The problem here is that each nation (or group of nations, as might be the case in certain parts of Europe) has a greater interest in its own local statistics than in the non-local statistics. In other words, if I include movies that aren't popular in the United States, the list will be of less interest to readers in the United States. This list mainly exists for my own benefit, and since I never see movies outside the United States, I have no interest in a global list. I don't want to maintain multiple lists, one is hard enough!

Sources

This data was compiled from many sources, including the following. (I know some of the links are dead, but I cannot do anything about that.)

Sources of inflation data (I divide the adjusted gross by the actual gross to get an average ticket price index):

Mr. Showbiz box office receipts adjusted for inflation
The Movie Times' version of the same list
The top 25 of the same list, from Washington Post, on digitallibrary.com
Box Office Report's list and also here

Sources of average movie ticket price data:

A Google search for "average admission price 5.39 5.66 5.81 2003" (or similar, with more recent numbers) will yield re-published reports of the data released by MPAA.
MPAA's 2006 US Theatrical Market Statistics report
MPAA's 2001 economic review
MPAA's 2000 economic review
MPAA's 1999 economic review
MPAA's 1998 economic review
Lee's Movie Info Adjuster

Sources of MPAA ratings (used to estimate child attendance rates):

Amazon

Sources of old (unadjusted) box office receipts:

Information Please top 100 all-time list (from Exhibitor Relations) (click on the "Movies and Videos" link to see some other related lists)
The AMUG list of $100 million movies
The Washington Post list of $100 million movies
The same list, on digitallibrary.com
Box Office Guru's box office archive
vex.net's box office archive

Sources of current box office receipts:

Yahoo! Movies: Weekly U.S. box office actuals
The Variety weekly top 60 list
IMDB's box office charts
Go to Show Biz Data, then click on "US weekly top 60" in the left menu area (usually doesn't work on Mondays)
The Sci Fi Paradise box office list

Also of interest:

MPAA 2000 report on movie audience demographics
The Internet Movie Database

Industry periodicals (not on-line, but at the library):

Variety
Hollywood Reporter
Motion Picture Daily

1 : For those interested in data for countries other than the United-States information, here are some links:

Inside Kino has figures for almost all of Europe and Australia. (In German, but easy to navigate: Quartral = "season"; Woche = "week")

Lumiere presents a searchable database and actually gives data in the form of admissions! They have data for Europe and Quebec.

Paul Boschen's Aussie box office lists

Not used but possibly interesting:

The United States consumer price index data was not used, because the MPAA average movie ticket price data was more relevant.

Other acknowledgments:

Some information contributed by: Rolf Polier.

Robert Munafo's home pages at Pair Networks

Men Core Values

© 1996-2008 Robert P. Munafo. Email the author

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

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