Sorry…..I Was So Wrong!

wrong I started ranking movies on the internet in February 2011.  My first movie subjects were all current actors and actresses and finding box office information was very easy….thank you Box Office Mojo.  As I grew an audience for my pages, I started getting requests for older actors. My mother-in-law requested a Clark Gable page.  At first I quickly dismissed this request….as I thought nobody would be interested in reading about somebody that passed away over 50 years ago.  That was mistake number one!  Turns out lots of people are interested in actors and actresses of yesteryear.  When I look at my Top 50 most popular pages….26 (or 52%) of them are classic performers!

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So when I started researching Mr. Gable’s movie career I quickly discovered box office rentals.  Box office rentals are what a movie studio gets back from theaters not the movie’s box office grosses.  So since I think I am a pretty smart guy (mistake number two), I gathered up some of my old Variety magazines that listed box office rentals.  I created a Excel spreadsheet (mistake number three…the wife says always use Access) that listed the box office rentals from Variety and the actual box office grosses from Box Office Mojo.  Overall I found over 1,000 movies that had both rentals and grosses.  I did some math and found that on average….box office rentals were 44.18% of box office grosses…or a multiplier of 2.2.  The easy formula I came up with was:  Box office rentals (times)  2.2 = actual box office gross.  The next thing I realized was that with the exception of Gable’s Gone With The Wind, he did not have a movie with a domestic box office gross of over $11 million.  So to solve that problem I found out average movie ticket prices from 1912 to 2011.  Using ticket prices I was able to give each of Gable’s movies an adjusted box office gross.  Calculating adjusted box office grosses turned out to be a great way to compare how an old movie would have performed today (I got that part right!).

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So feeling pretty good about my logic…I went to work.  Since 2011 I ranked almost 26,000 movies and have written over 300 movie pages on current and classic actors and actresses.  My movie pages have been quoted in newspapers, won some awards (3 time Hubbie winner…thank you thank you) and have opened some memorable communication lines with some of the movie subjects I have written about and their families. My pages have been read all over the world with over 5 million views.  Basically I have been running around singing Disney songs.

Recently I was researching the careers of Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert.  I almost feel like a treasure hunter…only instead of gold or money…I am searching for box office numbers from the 1930s and 1940s.  My searches have taken me to some pretty cool places.  During my Lombard and Colbert search…I ended up in Australia of all places….as I found Australia’s Jonathan Derek Silver’s 600 page thesis on the movie business.  One of his tables of information showed film rentals as percentage of box office grosses with sources from Film Daily Yearbook and others.  On my second viewing of the table I realized that the percentage CHANGED every year…..and that they were not even close to the percentage I used in ALL of my calculations of box office grosses.

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So after hitting the iceberg, I sent Thomas Andrews (he built the Titanic) down to assess the damage.  The good news is that almost 20,000 of the movies (movies from 1982 to 2016) in our database were shaken and scared but actually in pretty good shape.  The bad news?  All 5,619 classic adjusted box office grosses are WRONG!  When I was getting my multiplier I only used movies from 1980 to 1988 (that was my critical mistake) as the following table shows….the film rentals as percentage of box office grosses was constantly changing….and I picked the time frame that had the highest percentage…which ultimately severely short changed all of the classic movie’s adjusted box office.

The Following Table Shows Just How Wrong I Was

  • Column 1 is the amount of tickets a movie sold in that year
  • Column 2 is the wrong film rentals as percentage of box office grosses that I used
  • Column 3 is the amount of movies in my database for that year
  • Column 4 is the old number of movies with an adjusted $100 million or higher gross
  • Column 5 is the old number of movies with an adjusted $200 million or higher gross
  • Column 6 is the old average adjusted box office gross of all movies for that year
  • Column 7 is the new film rentals as percentage of box office grosses that I will use
  • Column 8 is the new number of movies with an adjusted $100 million or higher gross
  • Column 9 is the new number of movies with an adjusted $200 million or higher gross
  • Column 10 is the new average adjusted box office gross of all movies for that year
YearTickets SoldOld Rental %Movies Old $100 mil. MoviesOld AVG GrossNew Rental %New $100 mil. MoviesNew AVG Gross
19283.38 billion44.18%294$53.1330.00%5$80.65
19294.94 billion44.18%285$60.0031.30%8$86.96
19304.68 billion44.18%283$84.9332.50%17$118.74
19313.90 billion44.18%567$69.1233.80%21$92.55
19323.12 billion44.18%7712$55.3135.00%15$71.11
19333.12 billion44.18%8710$59.6235.00%12$76.76
19343.64 billion44.18%837$60.9535.00%15$77.46
19353.90 billion44.18%9610$64.9835.00%27$83.43
19364.57 billion44.18%9622$81.5435.00%50$122.57
19374.42 billion44.18%10813$67.8325.00%56$117.37
19384.42 billion44.18%9816$58.4425.00%46$105.30
19394.42 billion44.18%12017$61.6625.00%49$104.34
19404.16 billion44.18%10627$77.1035.00%39$103.55
19414.42 billion44.18%10031$84.0031.00%56$118.16
19424.42 billion44.18%16358$87.9435.00%79$113.46
19434.42 billion44.18%8748$115.6835.00%61$149.97
19444.42 billion44.18%8340$103.2131.00%51$147.32
19454.68 billion44.18%7539$116.5235.00%44$149.50
19464.68 billion44.18%10667$141.1035.00%74$181.15
19474.68 billion44.18%9546$106.1135.00%55$137.35
19484.68 billion44.18%9642$92.2835.00%58$119.84
19494.55 billion44.18%10123$72.2836.00%41$91.02
19503.12 billion44.18%11318$72.7322.50%36$94.15
19512.80 billion44.18%10815$59.6235.00%30$77.44
19522.65 billion44.18%11718$58.7536.00%30$74.05
19532.39 billion44.18%12517$59.9733.00%33$79.08
19542.54 billion44.18%9545$105.4235.00%51$136.67
19552.39 billion44.18%11034$90.3935.00%45$115.71
19562.44 billion44.18%10624$97.7331.00%33$125.57
19572.34 billion44.18%10818$61.7529.00%39$94.06
19582.08 billion44.18%9513$59.9127.00%36$98.82
19592.18 billion44.18%8922$83.0825.00%41$146.07
19602.08 billion44.18%8218$72.5123.00%41$137.36
19612.18 billion44.18%7917$76.8424.00%33$142.46
19622.23 billion44.18%8913$60.4922.00%33$121.56
19632.28 billion44.18%8722$75.1226.00%34$119.94
19642.25 billion44.18%8510$63.6825.00%28$100.82
19652.28 billion44.18%9915$80.6932.00%16$92.04
19661.97 billion44.18%8722$62.8232.00%23$69.71
19670.92 billion44.18%8013$75.1832.00%15$83.46
19680.97 billion44.18%10113$50.9132.00%20$64.65
19690.91 billion44.18%9311$46.7332.00%17$65.25
19700.92 billion44.18%10013$51.3227.00%20$74.89
19710.82 billion44.18%846$34.7025.00%13$53.86
19720.93 billion44.18%848$49.0727.00%15$74.59
19730.86 billion44.18%8212$66.8526.00%16$99.42
19741.00 billion44.18%7017$71.0529.00%23$95.07
19751.03 blllion44.18%8613$66.1930.00%24$82.98
19760.95 billion44.18%8416$55.9828.00%19$71.36
19771.12 billion44.18%8524$76.9632.00%26$83.44
20111.28 billion602 33
20121.36 billion66731
20131.34 billion68836
20141.27 billion70232
2015 1.30 billion69329
ford
So what am I going to do now?  I could just give up.  I could just ignore the newly found numbers and continue using my old calculations.  Or I could rebuild all of my old classic movie pages. So I asked myself what would Harrison Ford do? Pretty sure Mr. Ford would say…”Just rebuild the damn things”.  Well it won’t be fun…..but I am going to go back and fix all of these classic movie pages.  So how will you know if a page has been fixed?  One of the newest thing we have started doing on our pages is using a link in the co-star column.  So if you see that link….know that page has been fixed.  I would stay longer….but I have a boatload of work to do.  Sorry for my miscalculations.

50 thoughts on “Sorry…..I Was So Wrong!

    1. Hey Kevin…..good question….essential the lower the percentage in column 7 the bigger the the multiplier of the box office rental for that year. Before I only used 2.2 for every movie regardless of the year. Older movies benefited the most from the change. We did the calculations earlier this year…I can see if I can figure out the formula again….once it went into the program….I stopped thinking about those calculations…..lol.

  1. Okay, the reason why this is a trending page in my opinion is that

    1. The title is odd
    2. You have a picture of Leonard Nimoy aka Spock and there is a new Star Trek film out soon.

  2. Um – Bruce-

    Yes- regarding this trending page thing. and you only being able to see the last five comments…

    Remember which actor’s page I usually use to talk about you, me and Steve comments only?

    Well, I did leave a long comment on it….

    1. Hey Flora…I will have to check out that page. I have been checking out the numbers of the page…they are doing decent without me…especially Sunday. Seems I spend my time pushing the new pages…the old pages barely make the top trending section. If you look at the current list only two are new pages….and the rest are oldies but goodies.

    1. Hey Johnnie…glad you agree with my son. I do not currently have access to the edit button…..but I will try and remember to get rid of that Anonymous comment….thanks for letting me know.

  3. This is a educational and funny page. I give you credit for doing so much research and your seemingly willingness to fix your mistakes.

    1. Well, if you cannot see humour in your mistakes, you better not make any.

      I certainly better have a sense of humour.

      1. Hey Flora…gotta admit I was surprised this page was on the trending page…I wonder how this page 45 views today…that is a very number for a page that is not set up for web searches and such. I liked your comment…funny stuff.

        1. Maybe it has to do with the fact that you are not making any new pages and people are looking for odd titles….

          I have a theory, but I won’t say what it is here now because I’d rather pm you.

    2. Hey Johnnie Taylor…glad you liked this page….one of sons actually thinks this is one of my best written pages …..probably because I am admitting to being wrong….lol. I have no problem saying I make many mistakes on this website….so fixing them is something I like doing….because it makes the page better.

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