What boxoffice runs are unbelievable in retrospect?

[La Binoche]

34 minutes ago, Joel M said:

 

It was #2 behind E.T. which made 304m in 82' and another 20m in '85. 

 

And it is notable how suddenly the OS grosses expanded in '89-'90. For every one of the mega hits of the 70s-80s (besides E.T.)  a little over-under 200m OS was the ceiling. And in the span of 89-90 we got this:

Indian Jones 3         277m OS

Back to Future 2      213m

Pretty Woman          285m

Ghost                      288m

Dances with Wolves  240m

 

I don't think it was just inflation, it looks like OS markets had another expansion back then, maybe a little smaller than the early 00s expansion or the China explosion a few years ago.

You're right, I forgot about ET. 

 

Pretty Woman's grosses were ridiculous for being an R-rated film (the only one on the list). 

[Webslinger]

Glad to see this thread has gotten a bump. 

 

Just the other day, I was having a conversation with people who don't follow box office about how and why the landscape for awards movies has changed so drastically since the late '90s/early '00s. American Beauty made $130 million unadjusted while peaking in third and never surpassing $10 million in a single weekend; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit $128.1 million with a peak in fourth and no weekend above $10 million; and Shakespeare in Love scraped past $100 million without ever surpassing $8 million in a single three-day weekend (and it only cracked the top five once).

[Joel M]

The biggest change is still the near-extinction of mid-budget movies not the release pattern. Despite staggered releases studios were pushing those movies as their big movies of the fall/winter they didn't just rely on oscar buzz to do their marketing job, there wasn't even that much oscar buzz back then prior to ceremony, it was just the globes and oscar nominations, only industry people paid much attention to the other awards.

[jimisawesome]

^To add on a bit in the 90s studies would release movies that were aimed at adults and had no real award show aspirations.  Just look at most of the movies that Tom Cruise was in during the 90s.  Now if a movie is aimed at adults its basically automatically in the awards season talk. 

[lilmac]

I had a conversation today with someone much younger and generally unaware of boxoffice rankings. I told them that just a decade ago TDK was the "#2 movie of all-time" emphasizing the importance of adjusting for inflation. I mentioned how 1994 was so impressive because you had Forrest Gump and Lion King coming out around the same time as one another and both doing VERY well. 

 

Updates to the 'unbelievable box-office runs' would include Get Out.

 

Currently, Greatest Showman is awe inspiring but doesn't meet the bar of the all time greats.

[Maxmoser3]

2017 all in one word.

 

Greatest Showman is a recent one. An average film that had that kind of debut would at best make $75 million domestic total. But now possibly over $110 million and counting is amazing. Jumanji is another one considering it’s debut would make around Daddy’s Home 1 or even Sing level. Girls Trip grossing $115 million for a entire black cast is rare. 

 

2016 was another crazy year too. But that’s it.

 

So far 2018 not really although I’m amazed that Insidious 4 actually outgrossed Insidious 1 & 3 though domestic side obviously. But really it’s not a surprise since Blumhouse is making $$$$. Other than that so far Den Of Thieves is a surprise but not a blockbuster considering its OD outgrossed the Opening Weekend’s of Sabotage and somewhat Triple 9. And will outgross the domestic totals of those films by tomorrow. 

[Barnack]

On 1/14/2018 at 10:00 PM, jimisawesome said:

^To add on a bit in the 90s studies would release movies that were aimed at adults and had no real award show aspirations.  Just look at most of the movies that Tom Cruise was in during the 90s.  Now if a movie is aimed at adults its basically automatically in the awards season talk. 

 

I wonder how much of this is true, 94% of 12 Strong audience were adults, or look a Den of Thieve/Commuter.

 

if we take a look at the top 100 of the 2017 domestic box office, non-family, not aimed at the teen audience but not conceived for the award season:

 

Rought night

Victoria and abdul

the house

Home again

Life

Blade Runner

Logan lucky

American Assassin

Snatched

American Made

Atomic Blonde

Baywatch

Alien

Mummy

Girl Trip

50 shades

Orient express

John Wick

etc...

 

Maybe most of them on that list outside the top 15 were aimed at the 18+ audience, the thing is that the teens movie going audience market share did shrink so much since the 90s:

 

 

2016:

12-24: 29% (with the 12-17 being only 13% of the audience now)

25-39: 24%

40-49: 23%

60+: 13%

 

In the 2016 only 24% were sold to non adult and the over 60 are 13% same ticket share than the 12-17 now. Some of the 76% of the adult audience were taking there kids to see a kid movie, but adults are now 3 quarter of the theatrical audience.

 

What changed a bit is maybe more the adult taste ? That stay more like teenager's now that give that impression or that they do not reach some big impression outside the awards winning one.

[lilmac]

On 1/15/2018 at 10:10 PM, lilmac said:

I had a conversation today with someone much younger and generally unaware of boxoffice rankings. I told them that just a decade ago TDK was the "#2 movie of all-time" emphasizing the importance of adjusting for inflation. I mentioned how 1994 was so impressive because you had Forrest Gump and Lion King coming out around the same time as one another and both doing VERY well. 

 

Updates to the 'unbelievable box-office runs' would include Get Out.

 

Currently, Greatest Showman is awe inspiring but doesn't meet the bar of the all time greats.

I'm changing my tune.  Add TGS to my list.

 

The # of times it held at #4. The staying power. The weekends above its opening weekend. The low expectations and initial muted response. The surprise of it all. 

[DeeCee]

Has Crocodile Dundee been mentioned?

 

Adjusts to USD425m.  Top Gun just beat it by just under $2m for the year.  #1 for 9 weeks and in the top 10 for 6 months.

 

Pretty good for a foreign language film in the mid 80's.

 

I checked.  It's been mentioned twice by @Maxmoser3and @HesAPooka

[jimisawesome]

21 hours ago, DeeCee said:

Has Crocodile Dundee been mentioned?

 

@Maxmoser3
@HesAPooka

 

That's not a box office run, this is a box office run.  

[Juby]

On 1/13/2018 at 3:24 PM, Joel M said:

It was #2 behind E.T. which made 304m in 82' and another 20m in '85. 

 

And it is notable how suddenly the OS grosses expanded in '89-'90. For every one of the mega hits of the 70s-80s (besides E.T.)  a little over-under 200m OS was the ceiling. And in the span of 89-90 we got this:

Indian Jones 3         277m OS

Back to Future 2      213m

Pretty Woman          285m

Ghost                      288m

Dances with Wolves  240m

 

I don't think it was just inflation, it looks like OS markets had another expansion back then, maybe a little smaller than the early 00s expansion or the China explosion a few years ago.

 

That's actually not necessary true. Depending on source, E.T. overseas run was $305 mln (according to the Variety in 90s) or $280 mln (according to NYT in 80s). Ghost's overseas run was for years $300 mln (or a few dollars less according to the-numbers.com), Mojo updated it to $288 mln in late 90s or at the beginning of the XXI century. So, a lot of sources in early 90s could have gave us info that Ghost was bigger than E.T. and maybe that was true, cause films in that era were present in cinemas abroad for years! I would say, E.T. overseas numbers are not very solid, after 2002-re-release they definitely add too many $$ to its OS tank.

 

The more impressive than Ghost is Terminator 2. It was a highly demanded sequel of a mare hit (but huge on VHS) which - according to the sources from early 90s - was the very first movie ever to cross $300 mln overseas, and with $312-315 mln (again, depending on a source) it was the biggest movie of all time! It's done it with R-rating in many countries, without 3D, without IMAXes, without China. I'm not sure if there is any R-rated film that huge overseas.

+ Domestic run of T2 was also great. It was 13th movie ever to cross $200 milion, it had very good legs after the second opening ever only behind the Batman! Combined nearly $520 mln was the second biggest movie of all time worldwide, only behind the E.T.!! And it could be even bigger, but VHS were release quickly, somewhere in Nov 1991. In Poland we have thousands of pirate-VHS of T2 before the cinema release, that's why T2 disappointed with an over 6 times smaller admission than T1 in 1985.

 

I wonder how big T2 could have been today? Dom adjusted is $447,7 mln which gave us almost $690 mln OS in today's ATP + 3D + IMAXs + China (China loves Terminators) = easily over $1,2 mld worldwide (for a R-rated movie!).

 

 

But the no. #1 in history is off course Titanic. His original run is the most impressive by far, with a huge margin over the rest.

[Joel M]

5 hours ago, Juby said:

 

That's actually not necessary true. Depending on source, E.T. overseas run was $305 mln (according to the Variety in 90s) or $280 mln (according to NYT in 80s). Ghost's overseas run was for years $300 mln (or a few dollars less according to the-numbers.com), Mojo updated it to $288 mln in late 90s or at the beginning of the XXI century. So, a lot of sources in early 90s could have gave us info that Ghost was bigger than E.T. and maybe that was true, cause films in that era were present in cinemas abroad for years! I would say, E.T. overseas numbers are not very solid, after 2002-re-release they definitely add too many $$ to its OS tank.

 

It depends on what sources you choose to trust. Mojo has seperate numbers for the re-releases, 20,3 m. for the 1985 re-issue and 33,3 m. for the 20th anniversary. I don't see how a random article from the 80s or the 90s is more solid than boxofficemojo.

[Mojoguy]

Still annoyed that Jumanji 2 came out on bluray and dvd so quickly when it was still making good money in theaters. These kinds of leggy runs don't come often.

It could have made a couple million more, but Sony wants that cash from home video sales I guess.

[lilmac]

2 hours ago, Mojoguy said:

Still annoyed that Jumanji 2 came out on bluray and dvd so quickly when it was still making good money in theaters. These kinds of leggy runs don't come often.

It could have made a couple million more, but Sony wants that cash from home video sales I guess.

 Same. Even though it’s on blu Ray I want them to still keep it in theaters long enough to surpass Spiderman 

[Juby]

11 hours ago, Joel M said:

It depends on what sources you choose to trust. Mojo has seperate numbers for the re-releases, 20,3 m. for the 1985 re-issue and 33,3 m. for the 20th anniversary. I don't see how a random article from the 80s or the 90s is more solid than boxofficemojo.

But Mojo is not that solid and has contradictory information.

 

Look here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20011203120849/http://www.boxofficemojo.com:80/alltime/world/

 

Since the very beginning of its existence, Mojo gave E.T. $704,8 mln worldwide ($305,000,000 overseas estimated) - which isn't necessary the truth, because T2 was the first movie that crossed $300 mln OS (that's a fact!) and E.T. has no major releases between 1991 and 1998. The same numbers are on Guru site (probably based on Mojo or Variety from 1998), so let's assume Universal didn't overestimated the film, and this is true.

http://www.boxofficeguru.com/intlarch2.htm

 

However, after 2002 re-release the film add another $33,3 mln OS. So, it's final overseas gross should be ~$338,3 mln or something like that. Here Mojo has it estimated at $337 mln:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021001123059/http://boxofficemojo.com:80/alltime/world/

 

And then, for some reason, they add another $$$ to E.T. overseas gross in 2004!! From where this money came from?! No one knows. It looks like they add another $20,3 mln (or even $20,8 mln) form 1985 again with splinting E.T. releases. The $357,8 mln OS is bullshit.

 

Also, take a look on this:

http://variety.com/1993/film/box-office/dinos-dominate-world-110286/

 

E.T. was at $639 mln worldwide in 1993, so its overseas gross was "only" around $239 mln that day and has no major releases in years 1993-1998. Interesting, isnt?  

 

The same story is with domestic gross of Jaws, but it's another story for another times. Universal wasn't very honest about numbers of their movies.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Juby

[vc2002]

The Greatest Showman has to be here. Even if you take 5-day as the OW, it still has a 13x mutiplier. That's a mini Titanic.

[aabattery]

3 minutes ago, vc2002 said:

The Greatest Showman has to be here. Even if you take 5-day as the OW, it still has a 13x mutiplier. That's a mini Titanic.

 

 

It's pretty crazy. Hell of a run.

[Juby]

On 3/30/2018 at 9:29 AM, Juby said:

But Mojo is not that solid and has contradictory information.

 

Look here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20011203120849/http://www.boxofficemojo.com:80/alltime/world/

 

Since the very beginning of its existence, Mojo gave E.T. $704,8 mln worldwide ($305,000,000 overseas estimated) - which isn't necessary the truth, because T2 was the first movie that crossed $300 mln OS (that's a fact!) and E.T. has no major releases between 1991 and 1998. The same numbers are on Guru site (probably based on Mojo or Variety from 1998), so let's assume Universal didn't overestimated the film, and this is true.

http://www.boxofficeguru.com/intlarch2.htm

 

However, after 2002 re-release the film add another $33,3 mln OS. So, it's final overseas gross should be ~$338,3 mln or something like that. Here Mojo has it estimated at $337 mln:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021001123059/http://boxofficemojo.com:80/alltime/world/

 

And then, for some reason, they add another $$$ to E.T. overseas gross in 2004!! From where this money came from?! No one knows. It looks like they add another $20,3 mln (or even $20,8 mln) form 1985 again with splinting E.T. releases. The $357,8 mln OS is bullshit.

 

Also, take a look on this:

http://variety.com/1993/film/box-office/dinos-dominate-world-110286/

 

E.T. was at $639 mln worldwide in 1993, so its overseas gross was "only" around $239 mln that day and has no major releases in years 1993-1998. Interesting, isnt?  

 

Another version of E.T. worldwide number before 2002 re-release:

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/80025/Jurassic-Park/misc-notes.html

 

"The previous record holder was Spielberg's own "E.T." (USA/1982), which eventually grossed $701 million." So, without domestic gross, OS should have been around $301 mln... Maybe.

[DAJK]

Black Panther could be up there. But yea, the one-two punch of Jumanji and Showman legs are crazy. Not to mention Showman made well over 400 worldwide. 

[EscObAR123]

edit.

Edited July 12, 2018 by EscObAR123