Paul Dergarabedian and his team devised a method wherein they divided the average ticket price for the year a film was released into the film's gross to determine the estimated number of tickets the film would have sold.

So, CNBC contacted Comscore, a media measurement and analytics company, to work out how an adjusted figure could be determined.

Analysts would have to dive into each global market to determine the inflation rate in each country, a task that is nearly impossible considering most films are released in more than 100 markets during their initial run. So, it would be difficult to say with certainty that a film that thrived decades ago would still do so today.Īnother major reason that Hollywood doesn't adjust for inflation is the number of foreign markets films are now released in. Three-hour dramas about the lives of Southerners during the Civil War wouldn't be as popular in 2019 as they were in, say, 1939. The content of movies has also changed drastically. For comparison, Disney's 'Endgame' sold around 94.8 million tickets domestically since its release in April. Even if you exclude sporting events, concerts and at-home entertainment such as streaming services and video games, just the sheer number of options of what movie to see in theaters is so much larger than 50 years ago.įor that reason, a film like 'Gone with the Wind' sold more than 200 million tickets over the course of its initial release and additional seven rereleases in the U.S. There are so many factors behind what makes a movie a box office success and those factors have changed since the earliest days of cinema.įor one, consumers have many more choices of what to spend their money on when it comes to entertainment.

There's a reason the film industry doesn't measure the success of modern movies against those of the past - movie ticket inflation isn't an exact science.

The great wall movie box office