We keep coming back to the greatest of box office successes time and time again. Maybe it would be good to actually have a thread devoted to it entirely.


This spring marked a decade since the film passed A New Hope, and it looks like it will stay at the top for the remainder of the decade. I believe ET stayed at the top for 14 years, 1983-1997, when A New Hope passed it due to the huge re-release. Could Titanic match it again?

There was a great deal of competition between ET and Titanic during spring of 1998; at issue was the record of longest #1 streak. ET still holds this title; it was #1 for 16 nonconsecutive weeks, of which only 6 were consecutive. Titanic broke the consecutive weekend record, handily, but at 15 weeks at #1, it remained one weekend shy of matching ET.


I guess, by way of another tidbit: Adjusted for inflation, Titanic's gross this year will be $910m. Globally, given the weakness of the dollar, I think the film's gross, if one had to adjust it, would be at least double the original, so around $2.5B, maybe $3B.

So, for a film to have the same impact globally as Titanic did, it would have to gross $3.4-$3.9B worldwide.

Heh, maybe you should have waited until my list is over

Nah...this is entirely on its own.

Another one? Every year one springs up.

Anyway, amazing box office for an amazing movie. Cameron is the shit. 'nough said.

I start one every year I can't say enough about this film.

it will remain #1 for 20 years....at least.

Nah. By the middle of the next decade, ticket inflation will be such that you will only need a film to break out a la Spider-Man or Pirates or Shrek to beat Titanic. So, not a massive phenom on ET's or Titanic's level, but a second tier breakout success.


Ticket prices by 2015 will be $9-10. Using the admissions for Spider-Man, that would be $620-630m. A Shrek 2-sized hit would make $640-720m in 2015 with the same admissions. Titanic: $1.2-1.3B

And this insane rise in inflation really makes me feel like it's completely unfair to ever look at box office without adjusting it. I mean, if a film breaks Titanic's record in 2015, everyone will call it the most successful film of all-time, but really, it'll only have half the number of viewers that Titanic had. And that's kinda lame for the "highest-grossing movie of all-time" if you ask me.

I think there should be a point where adjusted box office becomes the one people track; the only problem is, records would never again be broken and it would make the box office less interesting, so that will never happen.

1930s - Gone With the Wind
1940s - Fantasia
1950s - The Ten Commandments
1960s - The Sound of Music
1970s - Star Wars
1980s - E.T.
1990s - Titanic
2000s - Shrek 2

One of these things is not like the other.

Shrek 2 is a flaming POS, I wish the film would just vanish.

12 years, Avatar is going to make crush Titanic.

Shrek 2 gets way too much hate. It's not even close to the best movie of the decade (or even its most memorable), but it's not like we're talking about friggin' Alvin and the Chipmunks or something of that variety being the decade's biggest earner.

As for Titanic, what is there to say that hasn't been said over the last ten years? We never see anything stay in the top ten for three and a half months anymore, much less stay at #1 for that amount of time.

most definitely not.

I agree. Of course, the same goes for the all-time BO champion Gone With The Wind - - with a BO of almost $1.4 billion, representing gawd knows how many tickets in 1939 admission prices...

Agreed.

Thats what makes Titanic so impressive. Back in the 90s we used to look at the adjusted list and biggies like Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump were huge - but were nowhere near GWTW, Ten Commandments, Star Wars, etc. Then Titanic came along and actually matched them or came close adjusted. You'd need a $750m+ grosser to do that today but with the DVD/internet age - that aint happening.

We have 2 years left, there will be a MUCH better run than Shrek 2 I think before the decade is done!

Actually, MadGez, Titanic is up to $910m unadjusted. $750m would put a film in the second tier, closer to Jurassic Park as to Titanic.

No, it represents ticket sasles from 1939 to 1989. The film was in theatres here and there for decades.


I think Gone With the Wind's estimated ticket slaes are around 208m or so. A New Hope is at 178m. Titanic is at 130m, and ET at 142m.


No film in history sold as many tickets as quickly as Titanic did between December 1997 and May 1998. I think it's the only film to have sold more than 100m tickets in half a year.

Just looking at Titanic's run to, its quite poetic as it stayed on top despite multiple close calls. It opened against a James Bond movie. In its 12th weekend, it was just $600,000 above U.S. Marshalls, then the now infamous estimated tie, and then beating The Man In The Iron Mask with Dicaprio in both in its 13th weekend. Then Grease taking the Friday spot, but losing the weekend in Titanic's 15th.

And I just learned a new fact about Titanic 10 years later! It didn't reach its peak number of theaters until its 16th weekend, with 3,265! It's the movie that keeps on giving box office feats!

MBFGW didn't until its 26th weekend, with 2,016 theatres

Yes, but that was expanding, it is expected that a film expanding will reach a peak a number of weeks later (ex. Oscar season when it'll start in a small # of theaters in say October and a slow run, and then have a wide release in January, or even March when the Oscars were then. Titanic started wide, and still added theaters even 16 weeks later.

Ex. American Beauty didn't reach its peak # of theaters until its 29th week.

I don't believe that Gone With The Wind made a significant percentage of it's BO in later re-releases, and beyond being released in an entirely different era, it had an unusual initial release strategy:





There's the number to beat!


Heh. If you wanna get into very specific records like that, it just cheapens the whole thing. It's like the record for the tallest building on top of a mountain in the SW region of North Dakota...

BTW...according to the Numbers.com, Titanic has now,over the last few years added another 3 mill to it's WW total.

I'd go see a re-release on the big screen in a heartbeat! I've been waiting...

I'd be first in line.