AVATAR: The (Inflatable) 3D Box-Office Effect
Giovanni Ribisi, Sigourney Weaver in James Cameron‘s Avatar (Mark Fellman / 20th Century Fox)
AVATAR: #26 at the Domestic Box Office (Inflation Adjusted)
If 3D/IMAX premium surcharges were factored in, Avatar would be way further down Box Office Mojo’s inflation-adjusted chart. As I’ve already explained in the comments section of a previous Avatar post, the 3D/IMAX surcharges can add quite a bit to Avatar‘s overall take: somewhere between 25-30 and 40 percent. Other movies, including the vast majority of recent releases, didn’t (and still don’t) have that sort of advantage — certainly not to Avatar‘s extent (80% of its domestic gross has come from 3D and/or IMAX screenings).
So, even if you go for the lower end of the scale and deduct only 25% from Avatar‘s total earnings, the 2010 box-office sensation would have taken in "only" $423.2 million, placing it at …
… #65, ahead of Disney’s 2003 animated Finding Nemo, behind Burt Reynolds‘ 1978 action flick for hicks Smokey and the Bandit.
If you go for a mid-level percentage, or about 33%, Avatar‘s "2D-equivalent revenues" (in terms of admissions) would be $376.3m, which would place it at …
… #92, ironically, right behind another 3D movie, Vincent Price‘s House of Wax (1953) and right ahead of Alfred Hitchcock‘s James Stewart-Grace Kelly thriller Rear Window (1954).
Paraphrasing what I wrote in my previous Avatar Box Office post:
Bear in mind that those are approximations based on "average" ticket prices provided by the National Association of Theater Owners. (Box Office Mojo came up with its own estimated average — $7.35 — for 2010; that’s the same as NATO’s 2009 "average.") An accurate calculation of a film’s popularity at the box office — as in, the number of tickets sold (and its ratio to the population size at the time) — would be based on where a movie made most of its money, e.g., a top-dollar New York house or in thousands of cheaper small-town theaters.
It’s also worth remembering that population increases, changes in movie-going demographics, and the growth of entertainment alternatives (home video, cable television, pay-per-view options) should all be taken into consideration when comparing the box-office success of movies from different eras. And that many of the movies found on Box Office Mojo’s inflation-adjusted chart had one or more rereleases throughout the years.
More information about: Avatar, box office, Burt Reynolds, Finding Nemo, Grace Kelly, House of Wax, James Cameron, Rear Window, Sigourney Weaver, Smokey and the Bandit
3 Responses to “AVATAR: The (Inflatable) 3D Box-Office Effect”
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This website is obsessed with the incredibly useless “adjusted for inflation” box office numbers. Fox doesn’t care, because they’re not getting paid in 1939 or 1998 dollars anyways. Here’s something that every writer seems to ignore when it comes to this story:
Higher prices=lower demand
…and yet, Avatar continues to soar in a recession. Even when you factor in that there are so many entertainment options in this decade, as well as being the most pirated film ever.
“higher prices=lower demand”
So why is it that out of the top 25 highest grossing movies off all time (domestic), 18 of them came from the last decade (2000s)? In fact, FIVE of them are from the past 2 years.
Costs are much higher too. In the end it all evens out, wouldn’t you say?