what makes me hate the movie avatar (i guess its kinda a spoiler)

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by Eightball

And they call it Unobtain-ium... Should have called it something even more direct like must-relocate-natives-tanium...

I found that to be silly...

WTF calls an element cant-get-it-tanium...

Just kind of killed the moment for me.

Well at least it was just 'the moment' that was killed. Others in this thread seem to think the whole movie was based on this minute detail.

[Ansur]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

I never liked fantasy or Tolkien's Books but i really enjoyed the movies when they came out.

By the way, you're probably going to hell for that statement. That's almost as bad as laughing at an MS joke.

[Bucho]

Originally Posted by Saint Marcos

Careful Spooky -- If you start using tickets sold, someone here will want to adjust it for urban population during the year the movie was made.

A better measure might be adjusting for availability of other options. When Gone With The Wind came out, wtf else was out there? In 1939 it was either watch GWTW, the Wizard of Oz (which few did, it was a dud in the box office), or listen to the Nazi's invading Poland over the shortwave. Choices in audio/visual entertainment are uncountable in todays world.

Haha, that's true Marcos, once you factor in population the older films go even higher up the list because the potential audience was smaller. I mean, if we wanted an academic study someone could probably find one but for putting a film's impact in its proper cultural context the inflation-adjusted stats are a pretty good indicator, and certainly far more revealing than naked box office numbers.

And none of this should ever be used as any kind of basis for trying to force some kind of objective evaluation on a film beyond its value as a product.

[Ansur]

I did. That's how I came up with 2.4bil for Avatar to match it. GWtW sold a little over 202mil tickets in its 1939 run when prices were averaged at about $0.95/ticket.

But for profitability, the production and marketing budget for Avatar was about $460mil. The company gets between 50-60% of the ticket sales, so they needed it to make $760-920mil to get profitable. GWtW had a total budget of about $4.9mil and took in over $400mil worldwide.

However you look at it, Avatar has raked in about $450mil in profit for the studio, plus the theaters are making good money from it. That's more than the gross of some successful movies.

[Bucho]

Originally Posted by Ansur

I did. That's how I came up with 2.4bil for Avatar to match it. GWtW sold a little over 202mil tickets in its 1939 run when prices were averaged at about $0.95/ticket.

But for profitability, the production and marketing budget for Avatar was about $460mil. The company gets between 50-60% of the ticket sales, so they needed it to make $760-920mil to get profitable. GWtW had a total budget of about $4.9mil and took in over $400mil worldwide.

However you look at it, Avatar has raked in about $450mil in profit for the studio, plus the theaters are making good money from it. That's more than the gross of some successful movies.

Avatar is a massive success, nobody's arguing that, we're just kicking around whether it could be seen as more or less successful than other massive successes. It doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things but it's interesting to think about culturally.

As an aside though, I don't get where the 2.4bil comes from. GWTW's adjusted is $1,485,028,000. That's saying that by present day's average ticket prices GWTW would have made that much money. Avatar is operating in the present day already so it doesn't really need adjusting (although the figures show a slight one). Doesn't that basically mean that to top GWTW Avatar needs to make only $1,485,028,001? Or did you factor in the fact that 3D charges more than average and that's where the extra billion comes from?

I mean, this adjusted list seems to be actually one of the things Spooky was asking for, it's rankings based on tickets sold. It doesn't factor in profitability, nor the fact that 3D tickets cost more as far as I can tell.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Bucho

.. It doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things but it's interesting to think about culturally.

I'm led to believe that the film GwtW followed Mitchell's book pretty faithfully, so if Cameron redoes GwtW, faithfully from the book, as 3d IMax then we'll have the right answer.

Won't we?

Ah, but then there's that audience expectation context again. Mass hypnotism?

[Ansur]

Bucho, I was factoring in the number of tickets it would need to sell, the higher prices of 3D tickets, and the increase in populations from about 2.5 to 6.7bil. Much of that growth was in undeveloped countries where the movie is not available or is very limited. The US has actually declined to below 5% of the world population, but still makes up over 30% of the movie's gross and made up almost 50% of GWtW's totals.

[Bucho]

Originally Posted by Ansur

Bucho, I was factoring in the number of tickets it would need to sell, the higher prices of 3D tickets, and the increase in populations from about 2.5 to 6.7bil. Much of that growth was in undeveloped countries where the movie is not available or is very limited. The US has actually declined to below 5% of the world population, but still makes up over 30% of the movie's gross and made up almost 50% of GWtW's totals.

Holy cow, good stuff man, you went all out on it. But you know the adjusted numbers were only for domestic box office right? Doesn't that mean it's not the relative world populations but the US populations you need to use?

[Ansur]

I know. Like I said, the gross for GWtW worldwide was a little over $400mil. The 202mil tickets were domestic, but since domestic was about 50% of gross, easy to figure.

[Saint Marcos]

Originally Posted by Ansur

Bucho, I was factoring in the number of tickets it would need to sell, the higher prices of 3D tickets, and the increase in populations from about 2.5 to 6.7bil. Much of that growth was in undeveloped countries where the movie is not available or is very limited. The US has actually declined to below 5% of the world population, but still makes up over 30% of the movie's gross and made up almost 50% of GWtW's totals.

Wait -- I could easily be mistaken, but it sounds like you're saying that since some bush tribe in Rwanda couldn't have seen Gone with the Wind, Avatar has to sell more tickets to keep up?