The financial success of Frozen is starting to generate a broader interest in this topic.

Thanks for the link

One aspect very few take into consideration is the market. Older films saw tons upon tons of re-releases before the home market came into play. Thus this makes films released before the 80s that much less impressive and films such as the Lion King, Aladdin, and Frozen that much more impressive. Of course now-a-days we have 3d re-releases...so let me just say how that makes films such as Aladdin and Frozen that much more impressive. And on top of all that. It seems like movies in the late 1930s did much better than that of other eras. This is perhaps less to do with the films themselves and more to do with the market at the time. If we adjust for inflation, why not adjust for market? That one is much harder to do, so I understand why it is not done, but it would be impressive if someone could devise a market ratio to factor into the inflation adjustments.

I'm not quite clear on what you mean by the term "market" above. Do you mean periods when films were more popular?

Essentially yes. I am defining market as demand. I suppose you can base this off of total tickets sold across all movies divided by the number of movies released wide that year.

Adjusting for popularity is certainly one way to influence the answer to the question this thread poses.

Perhaps, but then if the demand for movies is higher during a certain era, is that a reflection of individual movies or the act of going to the cinema itself? I obviously fall more in the latter.

It has to be Frozen

No way is Frozen more popular than Lion King. Frozen has less male appeal than Lion King.

Lion King doesn't really have female appeal, then.