Yesterday, on Big Hollywood, I read “Flyover State of Mind: Hollywood’s Red State Prejudice” by Carl Kozlowski.

In it, he mentioned that Avatar was the highest-grossing movie of all time but that, based on his estimates, only about 20% of the population had even seen it. (I came up with 31.34%, as you’ll see in the below table, but I used a different method of estimation.)

I decided it might be interesting to see the statistics on movie ticket sales as compared to the percentage of the population that had seen the movie.

Through Box Office Mojo, I got a list of the top 100 movies by ticket sales. (I only used the top 25 here.) And, through the U.S. Census, I was able to get population estimates for the years 1900-1999. I found the 2009 estimate through U.S. News & World Report.

Of course, these estimates are not going to scientifically accurate, and are presented more as a curiosity than an accurate accounting. For one thing, there is no way to filter out repeat ticket sales to the same people. So, one person may see a movie once while another may go back to see the film ten times. As such, the ticket sales will be higher than the number of individuals who have seen the film. On the flip side, this chart also does not account for VHS/DVD sales. These days, some may wait until the film is released on video so they can view at home. On the other hand, some will view it in the theatre and then buy the video to enjoy at home. So, again, there’s no way to determine that based on the available data. On a related note, the films before the advent of home video may have an advantage in ticket sales simply because, back then, the only way to see the movie was at the theatre.

The bottom line is that we cannot get a truly accurate measure of how many individuals have actually seen a given film.

That said, however, it can still paint an interesting picture and provide an alternative perspective to conventional means of estimating a movie’s popularity.

Some things of note. First, you’ll see that Gone with the Wind had more ticket sales than the U.S. population. According to the stats, 154% of the country saw the film. Of course, we know that’s not possible and must necessarily include multiple ticket sales by individuals. Still, this is a striking number, considering this was at the tail-end of the Great Depression.

By contrast, the #2 film on the list, Star Wars, had just 12% fewer ticket sales than Gone with the Wind, but those ticket sales represented under 81% of the population.

Similarly, The Empire Strikes Back was almost equal in ticket sales to Ben Hur, but was seen by 12% less of the population. And, while Avatar had more ticket sales, it was viewed by half the amount of the population of Fantasia.

On the other hand, if you rank the movies by percentage of the population, 8 of the top 10 films remain in the top 10. Only The Exorcist and Titanic leave the ranks of the top ten, dropping into the teens. Fantasia moves into the #7 spot and Ben Hur just makes the cut at #10. It’d be interesting to see how ranks changed if all 100 top films were thrown into the calculations.

Anyway, for your consideration, debate and enjoyment, here is the table:

Sources:
Movies & Ticket Sale Estimates: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm?adjust_yr=1&p=.htm
U.S. Population Estimates: http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt
U.S. Population Estimate (2009): http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/12/31/us-population-2009-305-million-and-counting

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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