“Let’s all go to the lobby…”
In a letter to The Times Literary Supplement of London, Jonathan Harvey describes one way in which Hollywood money folk craft fictions as seductive as those of their scriptwriters – in ranking their current productions among the all-time box-office champs:
Anyone with any savvy in the film industry knows that these figures are not at all adjusted for inflation and, therefore, given the enormous rise in ticket prices over the past twenty years, are rather artificially skewed to recent works. They are based on dollar figures, not the number of tickets sold. This is how the film industry prefers it, as it is good for marketing purposes.
Sales of books on bestseller lists are still tallied honestly by copies sold. On these terms, Harry Potter really is the bestselling book series of all time. Film insiders know that when adjusted for inflation, the “bestselling” movie of all time remains Gone with the Wind, though many lists will tell you it is Titanic. In the properly inflation-adjusted list, Prince Caspian is not even in the top 100.
Do they still play “lets all go to the lobby anywhere”? Anyway, The population is much larger now than. The total economy is larger. I think it would be interesting to know what those movie and book sales represented in percentage of GDP and as a per cent of receipts within their respective industries. What about DVD sales? VHS sales. If you factor in those what is number one?
My son has convinced me that it is worth splurging on Imax for special movies. We plan on seeing Dark Knight on Imax. Given the proliferation of restaurants that charge a pretty hefty price, I am surprised that there arent more IMAX theaters.
Steve
Interesting as well is the phenomenon, no longer novel, that in our increasingly mass culture the purely denominable box office tally is increasingly becoming the only common denominator remaining.