The original “Avatar” from 2009 is the all-time boxoffice champ with nearly $3 billion in global boxoffice, but data website Information Is Beautiful (IIB) identifies other cinema high achievers using other metrics. The IIB post “What is the Most Successful Hollywood Movie of All Time?” provides hard-to-get business data on the 500 most significant theatrical films going back to the 1970s
For example, 2002 romantic comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with a low budget of $5 million grossed $369 million worldwide boxoffice (or $620 million in inflation-adjusted). Its cinema gross is 74 times its production cost. The original “Big Fat Greek” was released by IFC Films, and a third film from Focus Features is due in cinemas Sept. 8 of this year.
Meanwhile, for the aforementioned “Avatar” from 2009, the multiple on its budget is 12 times. The “Avatar” budget of $237 million is so large that its “multiple” metric is less impressive than other films with smaller budgets. But in absolute dollars, “Avatar” is a huge profit gusher that was originally released by 20th Century Fox Pictures (now owned by Walt Disney).
The original “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” from 1977 grossed $775 million against a budget of $11 million. for a 70-times multiple. That multiple is calculated by dividing its worldwide boxoffice by its production cost. 20th Century Fox Pictures released the original to theaters and is now owned by Disney.
“Legendary blockbusters from the 70s such as ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Jaws,’ and ‘E.T.’ take their rightful place,” says the IIB post. “You can suddenly see what a monster hit ‘The Exorcist’ was. And how incredibly close ‘Titanic’ ($4.120 bn adjusted gross) comes to taking the top spot from ‘Avatar’ — $4.121bn adjusted gross”. Yes just $1 million dollars” separate them on an inflation-adjusted basis. Some of the tables in the posted article are interactive whereby data pops up when a cursor hovers over a dot-plot or movie title.
Elsewhere, Universal Pictures “Jaws” from 1975 grossed $477 million against a $9 million budget. Another Universal release, “E.T. – the Extra Terrestrial,” grossed $793 million worldwide in 1982 against a $10.5 million budget.
Paramount’s musical “Grease” from 1978 grossed $396 million against its budget of $6 million. Warner Bros. Pictures horror “The Exorcist” from 1973 carries a 37 multiple on its $441 million global gross divided by its $12 million production cost.
Shoestring-budgeted films have enormous multiples/ratios if they become hits, such as “Paranormal Activity” and Universal Pictures’ social commentary thriller “Get Out” from 2017. Supernatural thriller “Paranormal” from 2007 cost just $15,000 (originally meant to be merely a demonstration of concept, but that actually got distributed to cinemas by Paramount Pictures), grossing $193 million globally, for a 12,993 times multiple!
Another bloc of IIB data is looking at hit horror films being gushers of profits, benefiting from low production costs in comparison to glossy, special effects extravaganzas and Hollywood star vehicles saddled with superstar salaries.
Elsewhere, another dashboard adjusts boxoffice for inflation. For example, the original 1977 “Star Wars” grossed $775 million worldwide, which IIB calculates is $3.9 billion in today’s dollars. Still, $775 million in global boxoffice was mind-boggling in 1977. Alas, there’s no data on marketing spend because that information is extremely difficult to collect.
United Kingdom-based Information Is Beautiful services up data on an assortment of topics and is led by David McCandless, who is author of three info-graphic books.
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