Gone With the Wind (1939) Box Office:20 million Tickets Sold in the First Year.

[terrestrial]

Do give people a feeling for the average ticket prices of the years in comparison to 2015:

 

$0.25 in 1936 = has in 2015 a value of $4.25

Annual Inflation: 3.65%

Total Inflation: 1601.54%

 

$0.25 in 1938 = has in 2015 a value of $4.07

Annual Inflation: 3.69%

Total Inflation: 1530.64%

 

$0.23 in 1939 = has in 2015 a value of $3.85

Annual Inflation: 3.78%

Total Inflation: 1577.23%

 

$0.24 in 1940 = has in 2015 a value of $4.02

....

 

That makes the named $2.2 in @DeeCees 2nd post for assumed luxus tickets the equivalent to $36.89 in 2015 , and the $1.1 logically the 1/2 of that

 

I sooo love BOT, whereelse to discuss and delve in such themes?

Edited January 4, 2016 by terrestrial

[pieman]

23 minutes ago, terrestrial said:

....with only a small percentage of available screens in comparison.

 

And that's only 1 out of a lot of details to take into consideration too

 

 

 

And about half the population of America at the time. It also didn't have 10+ re-releases because you're counting it's expansion out of the large movie houses in New York and Los Angeles as a re-releases. Not to mention that adjusted for inflation that it's going to gross about twice as much as TFA.

Edited January 4, 2016 by pieman

[terrestrial]

1 minute ago, pieman said:

And about half the population of America at the time.

 

It also didn't have 10+ re-releases because you're counting it's expansion out of the large movie houses in New York and Los Angeles as a re-releases. Not to mention that adjusted for inflation that it's going to gross about twice as much as TFA.

Agree to line one, see smiley

but:

You quoted the wrong person, I didn't post anything like that detail (re-releases) that was our Avatar-fanatic-newbe Jim-something I was answering to

[Juby]

GONE WITH THE WIND (Budget $3.977 mln) ......... /ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION/ (ATP $8.34, Dec. 2015)

1939 .......... $20,000,000 ...................................... /$695 mln/

1941 .......... $11,000,000 ........... $31,000,000 ..... /$366.96 mln/

1942 .......... $4,000,000 ............. $35,000,000 ..... /$123.56 mln/

1947 .......... $???

1954 .......... $???

1961 .......... $???

1967 .......... $???

1974 .......... $???            ............ $189,523,031

1989 .......... $2,403,316 ............ $191,926,347 .... /$5.05 mln/

1998 .......... $6,750,112 ............ $198,676,459 .... /$12 mln/

ALL  ........... $198,676,459 .................................... /$??/

 

Over $1.2 mld DOM adjusted only from 6 of 10 releases! Mojo has wrong data, adjusted number for Gone with the Wind should be more than $1.7 mld, and today average ticket price is $8,61 not $8,34 when I calculate this!

Edited January 4, 2016 by Juby

[terrestrial]

35 minutes ago, Juby said:

1939 .......... $20,000,000 ...................................... /$695 mln/

 

Value: $335,445,714.28

 

Annual Inflation: 3.78%

Total Inflation: 1577.23%

[TalismanRing]

4 minutes ago, terrestrial said:

 

Value: $335,445,714.28

 

Annual Inflation: 3.78%

Total Inflation: 1577.23%

 

I think ticket price inflation makes more sense because every product and service increases or decreases at it's own rate of inflation. 

[terrestrial]

8 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

I think ticket price inflation makes more sense because every product and service increases or decreases at it's own rate of inflation. 

 

Might depend on the exact situation, but as a start out of a such far in the past 'laying' 1st release, I disagree.

 

I think for results per year the direct calculation of inflation is the basis for comparisons to today's results. I would calculate each year for itself, including taking into account during the discussion of said year the average ticket prices in comparison to the known prices for that movie in that year.

[TalismanRing]

The fluctuations and comparisons to the inflation of other goods and services makes are just too variable.

 

In 1940 a dozen eggs cost 45 cents.  In late 2015 it was $2.70 - more than 100% than the $1.30 was in 2005.

 

A movie ticket in 1940 cost 53% the price of a dozen eggs.  Now it's on avg more than 3 times as much while in 2005 the avg ticket price was $6.41 and 5 times as much.

 

Just look at the housing market in the US, inflation adjusted

 

http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/Blog_Housing_Prices_1890_2006.jpg

 

Or how prices for goods and services fluctuated by decade.  A dozen eggs cost the same in 1920 as 1970, but not the decades in between

 

http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm

[TalismanRing]

I really wish we could edit posts again.

 

In the U.S.:

 

Avg urban rent per month in 1940 was $31 approx 129x the avg movie ticket.

Avg urban rent per month in 2015 was ~ $1,200 approx 144x the avg movie ticket.

 

 

 

[Jessie]

3 hours ago, pieman said:

 

Totally untrue. If anything it is way more significant.

 

No. It needed numerous amounts of re-releases to sell the amount t of tickets they did 

[TalismanRing]

7 minutes ago, Jessie said:

 

No. It needed numerous amounts of re-releases to sell the amount t of tickets they did 

 

The first release was a specialty release, like what Tarantino just did or Everest premiering on on IMAX - only it was wildly more successful as it went from theater to theater around the country, not staying in most for more than a week or two even though the demand was still sky high.  It sold 20m tickets. The general release right after sold another 52m tickets.  The third release happened pretty much right on the heels of the 2nd release and sold another 24m tickets.  From Dec 1939 - Dec 1942 it sold 96m tickets to a population of 130.9m people.  How is that not impressive? 

[Jonwo]

GWTW's success is more incredible in that it's very long and was only shown once or twice a day in its roadshow release. MGM was getting 70% of the takings so I guess the film was already profitable before it hit general release. 

 

It's trickier to track the OS box office for GWTW but it played at the Empire in Leicester Square for 4 years and didn't go down to popular prices for at least a year. Had it not been for WWII, it probably would have been even bigger.

[DMan7]

Does anyone think a GWTW movie in today's society will do similar business as in 1939?

[The Panda]

5 hours ago, TalismanRing said:

 

 

Interesting that ticket prices shot up 30% when the great Depression hit.

 

Also, to put the 72m admissions just after the first general release (and 96m after the second) in perspective the US population was 130.9m in 1939.  (It's almost 2 1/2 times bigger now).

 

Thats an interesting thing to take into consideration.

 

So the 72m admissions is equivalent 103.4m admissions in today's time.  So it would have made 890.3m first run when you adjust it to inflation.

 

So if you take the total admissions, adjust it to inflation, and account for difference in population, that's a 2.451b dollar gross.  A domestic total bigger than every movie worldwide besides Avatar.

Edited January 4, 2016 by The Panda Menace

[Jonwo]

12 minutes ago, DMan7 said:

Does anyone think a GWTW movie in today's society will do similar business as in 1939?

 

I think that sort of film only clicks with audiences every so often e.g. Titanic. It wouldn't be four hour long either I suspect they would have split into two films and actually having seen it, it does end in time for the intermission where you could have a hook for the second part. 

[kswiston]

10 minutes ago, The Panda Menace said:

 

Thats an interesting thing to take into consideration.

 

So the 72m admissions is equivalent 103.4m admissions in today's time.  So it would have made 890.3m first run when you adjust it to inflation.

 

So if you take the total admissions, adjust it to inflation, and account for difference in population, that's a 2.451b dollar gross.  A domestic total bigger than every movie worldwide besides Avatar.

 

Adjusting for US population makes no sense when you consider the fact that we are talking about an era where home television didn't even exist outside being a novelty owned by a few people. 

 

Films are on home video 3-8 months after their theatrical release now. 

Edited January 4, 2016 by kswiston

[The Panda]

4 minutes ago, kswiston said:

 

Adjusting for US population makes no sense when you consider the fact that we are talking about an era where home television didn't even exist outside being a novelty owned by a few people. 

 

Films are on home video 3-8 months after their theatrical release now. 

 

I was doing to for the fun of it.  I realize these are two different eras, but it's fun to see how big it would have been with a roughly modern sized population.

 

Thats assuming the ratio stuck.

[Caladbolg]

Great thread, nice to revisit the classics in history while we're witnessing history in the making.

[arlo]

1 hour ago, TalismanRing said:

 

The first release was a specialty release, like what Tarantino just did or Everest premiering on on IMAX - only it was wildly more successful as it went from theater to theater around the country, not staying in most for more than a week or two even though the demand was still sky high.  It sold 20m tickets. The general release right after sold another 52m tickets.  The third release happened pretty much right on the heels of the 2nd release and sold another 24m tickets.  From Dec 1939 - Dec 1942 it sold 96m tickets to a population of 130.9m people.  How is that not impressive? 

 

According to the NY Times, Gone with the Wind had 52 million admissions total after its 2nd release. This was in an article dated March 17 1942 that used to be available on their site. You can google this quote "52,000,000 paid admissions" to see others referencing it. 

 

From EW: "According to Roland Flamini’s 1975 book Scarlett, Rhett, and a Cast of Thousands, the film sold 25 million tickets during its initial release in 1939-40. MGM immediately reissued Wind in 1941 and 1942, selling an additional 24 million and 10.5 million tickets, respectively."

 

Don't even know if the above is close to true, but there it is. There's a discrepancy of 3 million admissions even between those two sources, which is actually a pretty small discrepancy given the poor quality of box office reporting before the 1980s. That's the #1 problem here in all this data collection effort. Even most of the numbers we do find are questionable and often contradictory. No old movies should even be on any all-time adjusted list until their releases are thoroughly documented, but the media has been too lazy to do it. It shouldn't be left to message board posters, especially since a lot of the data is blocked by insanely expensive pay walls.

 

Anyway, I went to Google Books to check EW's source and found it claimed Gone with the Wind's 2nd release had 24 million admissions from 8100 theaters, the 3rd release had 10.5 million admissions. Counting all 3 releases "by july 1943 it had grossed $32 million domestically" (almost certainly they meant rentals here).

Edited January 4, 2016 by arlo

[TalismanRing]

14 minutes ago, kswiston said:

 

Adjusting for US population makes no sense when you consider the fact that we are talking about an era where home television didn't even exist outside being a novelty owned by a few people. 

 

Films are on home video 3-8 months after their theatrical release now. 

 

Yes it was an era where 80m tickets were sold a week and 4+ billion tickets were sold a year in the U.S> But it was also an era when a new film came out every day (and in 1939 that quality was extremely high) they were not lacking for film choice.   If we look at the era pre TV (1950) only 10 movies are on all the all time list and four of the others were the oft released Disney Animation movies and none are near the business GWTW did.  Even for it's time, and even with the re-releases GWTW was an extreme outlier.

 

Astoundingly,  according to BOM  it also made as much O/S during a time when several large European markets were closed to it, or heavily impacted because of WWII

 

191 77 The Best Years of Our Lives RKO $473,550,000 $23,650,000 1946 192 96 Duel in the Sun Selz. $439,285,700 $20,408,163 1946 193 53 The Bells of St. Mary's RKO $540,235,300 $21,333,333 1945 194 50 Bambi RKO $548,564,200 $102,247,150 1942^ 195 23 Fantasia Dis. $715,004,300 $76,408,097 1941^ 196 108 Sergeant York WB $414,340,700 $16,361,885 1941 197 41 Pinocchio Dis. $580,342,700 $84,254,167 1940^ 198 1 Gone with the Wind MGM $1,739,604,200 $198,676,459 1939^ 199 10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Dis. $938,490,000 $184,925,486 1937^ 200 119 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse MPC $395,357,100 $9,183,673 1921