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You cannot compare Gone With The Wind to a modern movie

Posted by: grengrad on Jan 16, 08:05 in response to sneak's post when I look at inflation adjusted numbers I can't fathom...

If you look at the inflation adjusted records, there are very few modern movies, and you even have relatively insignificant movies well ahead of Avatar.

There is simply no comparing older movies to modern movies, because there was nothing else to do back then.

Now, a movie has to compete against, many other movies, HD TV, massive home theater systems, thousands of channels of content for everyones needs, interactive video games, diverse local musical performances, etc. When Gone With The Wind Came out, the Great Depression was starting to wind down, but the public was still starved for entertainment, and the cinema was an affordable way to do it. People at the time were very poorly traveled due to having spent a decade struggling to survive.

It is no suprise that the biggest movie from 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942 are all ahead of Avatar.

You can then note that there are no movies in the top 50 from 1943-1955 as Americans ventured off to war, became better traveled and took up some new things to do in their lives.

There were no DVD/VHS releases back then, so if you wanted to see a movie you went out and saw it. This meant that, movies had longer theatrical runs back then. Nowadays, you have a blockbuster and only a month later it is losing many of its screens to the next big thing. In some cases it even has another blockbuster coming out the same week or the next week. There were no multiplexes and so people had few choices when they wanted to see a movie, so they saw the same movie multiple times.

GWTW was released multiple times. Again, having no DVD/VHS releases allowed the movie to milk it's run.

There was no internet or piracy. Avatar was downloaded 1 million times within it's first week.

GWTW did amazing sales, but the only movies you can compare to each other are movies from the same era.

For me that means post HDTV movies are the only movies you came compare vs Avatar. Maybe, if you are feeling generous, post DVD movies.

Thirty years from now someone else will be making the same post arguing that some movie can't be compared to Avatar's sales, because we didn't have 3D TVs yet, and that is why Avatar's numbers beat Batman 7's numbers.

Nikki: Eli with $12M Fri., Avatar $10.5M, Bones with $6.2M islander Jan 16, 06:17

Avatar will still win the weekend, probably with $44-45 million. {nm} secretstalker Jan 16, 06:30

50+ easily. The im's for family films past MLK wknds have been redunkulous (5.9 for Kangaroo Jack, 5.2 for nmus) {nm} islander Jan 16, 06:34

I don't think Avatar has been doing normal family film internal mults in past weeks so probably more like 4.5 for the weekend {nm} secretstalker Jan 16, 06:35

Its all good. Everyhting it makes now is just extremley yummy gravy on that Hoilday warrant islander Jan 16, 06:38

So it will most likely beat tiatnic for biggest 5th weekend, beat the bat for fastest to 500mm, if next weekend holds up sneak Jan 16, 06:38

The crazy thing is that it not only will beat the Bat for fastest to 500 mil... but it's only the third movie to hit that amount domestic {nm} secretstalker Jan 16, 06:39

when I look at inflation adjusted numbers I can't fathom gone with the wind; wonder how ticket prices compared sneak Jan 16, 06:52

There are some that question the inflation-adjusted number based on the number of re-releases and how they all fit together. Jelly Jan 16, 07:41

You cannot compare Gone With The Wind to a modern movie grengrad Jan 16, 08:05

Also, Gone With the Wind was re-released at least half a dozen times over the years. {nm} Salieri Jan 16, 08:55

Exactly.. just like comparing Avatar to Titanic isn't fair... secretstalker Jan 16, 10:56