Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) is now the number one movie when it comes to North America box office grosses. The box office success of Star Wars 7 was incredible. But, when you look at the all-time North America ticket sales leaders…..Star Wars: The Force Awakens has not even cracked the Top 10.
So with Star Wars: The Force Awakens now being listed as the biggest box office hit of all-time….we figured it would be interesting to look at the top ticket selling movies of all-time. The following table shows all the movies in our database that sold more than 40 million tickets in North America. If you compare our table to Box Office Mojo’s Adjusted For Inflation Leaders you will see some differences. Box Office Mojo is awesome when looking at movies from 1982 to today. Easily the best source on the internet. Movies made before 1980 are not the strength of Box Office Mojo…as they often use box office rentals versus box office grosses.
We did some massive updates on this page today. The good news is we now have more information on each of these blockbusters. The bad news is our database is not letting us include our estimated ticket sells in the table….so we had to create a second table with those ticket numbers. So if you sort the first table by adjusted domestic gross….it will rank the top box office movies from #1 Gone With The Wind to #275 The Aristocats. To see the estimated ticket sell numbers you have to go to the second table.
All Time Top Ticket Selling Movies Can Be Sorted 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by movie title and movie trailers
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by the stars of the movie
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by how much they earned in adjusted domestic box office (in millions)
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by estimated tickets sold (in millions)
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by critic and audience reviews
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movies by Oscar nominations and Oscar wins
- Sort All Time Top Ticket Selling movie by UMR Score…..UMR Score combines box office, reviews and awards
HI STEVE: Thanks for the reply – at last!
First let me apologise for omitting my personal satisfaction rating figure from the previous posts. However luckily I kept my notes and I see that my induvial scores add up to around 98.5%. That will not surprise you following my positive comments in those previous posts.
You make a number of points and I agree that all of them are valid. In particular I too have repeatedly paid tribute to the Work Horse as the Wizard of Stats. In relation to the magnitude, accuracy and consistency of the figures he has produced non-stop in all kinds of variations over the years he has thoroughly earned that accolade normally extended to the Greats among movie stars such as Mumbles, The Duke and Al Leach “We shall likely never see his like again!”
Regarding your point about re-releases, whilst tighter records are kept of the earnings modern films a complaint of film historians about classic era records has long been that as a film got most benefit from the publicity about high grosses in its first year, a number of studios in the old days didn’t think it worthwhile publishing re-release figures, so that many grosses being quoted for classic era flicks might understate the position . Continued in Part 2.
Box Office Mojo always argued that pre 1970 box office figures were inconsistent and unreliable, and therefore Mojo usually published just post 1970 figures. Even then there could be inconsistencies. For example Bruce’s stats seem to suggest Godpop 1972 grossed worldwide around $245 million [that’s nearly $1.5 billion dollars today according to the Us Bureau of Labor Stats]; Box office Mojo agreed with WH; but The Numbers says it is $268.5 million and gives a very precise breakdown-
Domestic Box Office $134,966,411
International Box Office $133,533,589
Worldwide Box Office $268,500,000
$268.5 in 1972 is worth about $ 1.61 billion today. Again though Wikipedia puts Godpop’s global gross as high as $286 million, equal to $1.72 billion today. Most sources [including WH] quote Apocalypse Now’s worldwide gross at $150 million but the authoritative American Newsweek magazine insists it is approx $200 million. That’s a considerable difference between around $540 and $725 million respectively when the figures are adjusted to today’s prices by the US Bureau of Lab Stats.
Some critics claim that often the inconsistences arise from (1) some sources ignoring re-release figures as I have mentioned and/or (2) studios in effect lying about the totality of a movie’s earning to avoid paying out profits due to some of those entitled to them.
Brando took the Salkind Brothers and Francis Coppola to court for allegedly trying to diddle him out of his due profit participation in Superman 1978 and Apocalypse Now respectively. Eventually, around 1983, Marlon got a hefty out-of-court settlement which when combined for the two movies was reported variously as approx $25 and 28 million, $63 – 71 million in 2019 dollars.
Hi Bob, thanks for the added info and generous rating, much appreciated.
My next video is based on worldwide adjusted grosses and it’s a tricky subject. I’ve looked at a number of sources including Bruce’s, but many of the calculations are mine. I’ve looked at re-release dates for the big movies of the past, to get a fairer estimate of the total.
For The Godfather my rough calculation for worldwide gross is around $1.5bn, it’s not in the top 20. Bruce has the Godfather at around $1.3bn. Has the Godfather been successfully re-released since 1972? Box Office Mojo lists a few brief releases starting from 1997. Which means Godfather had made nearly all it’s earnings in the early 70s.
There are fewer classics in my top 100 for worldwide grosses than the ticket selling chart, for the simple reason foreign grosses are difficult to find. For instance The Robe and Quo Vadis were huge but how much did they make overseas? Guessing won’t work so they are out of the chart.
HI STEVE: Thanks for the further comments.
As far as I know Godpop made all its big cinematic money in the 1972/73 period, though according to Lee’s movies it has chalked up DVD/video sales in the US of around $95 million over the past 20 years.
Your Worldwide adjusted cinematic gross of $1.5 billion for Godpop suggests an actual gross in 1972/73 of just short of $286 million on the basis of ticket sales, the top figure quoted by Wikipedia
However as ticket inflation and general price inflation advanced at different rates a $286 gross back in 1972 would have the purchasing power of roughly $1.6 billion today according to The Consumper Price Index [CPI] of the US Bureau of Labor Stats
In other words my understanding is that if you stick with $1.5 billion you, Wikipedia and CPI will in effect will ALL be saying that Godpop’s 1972/73 worldwide gross was $286 million. One other scholarly article that I saw published about 2 years ago also quoted $286 as a top figure.
Anyway I will be keenly interested in your statistical conclusions when your video come out. However I will not be getting into any debates about the figures aa my main aim will simply be to enjoy the visuals again.
Hey Bob…pretty sure Steve will forgive you for forgetting that information.
Hey Steve…..looking forward to your Worldwide Gross video…should be very interesting. As for The Robe and Quo Vadis we have some pretty good resources for those movies with regards to our Top Worldwide Grosses. We have the actual ledger totals from MGM on Quo Vadis and numerous sources for The Robe earning 9.4 million in foreign rentals. Both movies have a spot on our Top 250 Worldwide Page. https://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/all-time-top-worldwide-box-office-grosses-movies/
Hey Bob….thanks for bringing these comments to this page. Granted both pages (this one) and Steve’s video page will be here a long time….but this discussion really fits in better over here. Thanks again. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
Bob I tried posting it again with different text, no show.
I don’t think Bruce’s spam filter likes me. 🙁
HI STEVE LASTMAN
Have bin there. Have suffered like you. However rememeber the lines from the Bob Dylan song The Times They are a Changing-
“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last”
Can you not send WH an SOS E Mail? Sometimes he has to be coaxed out of his lair.
STEVE If all else fails and the WH lets you down try again tomorrow when you’re fresh by setting out your post in a different format.
One of my posts I could not get through despite numerous attempts when it was in normal sentences and paragraphs format like the following-
2/first one for Fraulein 3/two for DearBrigitte4/Take Her She’s Mine-very saucy!5/FL for D Day 6th June6/My Blue Heaven7/first raunchy one for Wabash Avenue8/FL for Desiree – note Hirsch: Brando billed alone above title
So I tabulated the information as follows and the post went through immediately:
2/first one for Fraulein
3/two for Dear Brigitte
4/Take Her She’s Mine-very saucy!
5/FL for D Day 6th June
6/My Blue Heaven
7/first raunchy one for Wabash Avenue
8/FL for Desiree – note Hirsch: Brando billed alone above title.
PS: The Work Horse isn’t blackballing you because he thinks you’re competing with him re statistics for ticket sales?
🙂 Bob, I sent Bruce an email, hopefully he’ll see it. If he ever gets to the nearest internet.
If the missing comments are listed as spam than they should still be in the spam folder, if Bruce finds them he can release the most recent comment posted by me. Or I can try posting it again.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll be back tomorrow hopefully with more success.
adios amigos
Bob, I tried sending in my reply for the third time and it still won’t work. Sorry about that.
I hope Bruce pops in to see what the problem might be.
STEVE:
I have found that sometimes when a post of mine won’t go through and I put it down to ‘spammers’ it’s actually because I’ve innocently enough inserted some comment that WH’s safety mechanism i [which I think Flora once said he had organised for his, now frequent, absences] is programmed to reject as crossing the line that makes the comment an ‘off-color’ remark. On occasions when I have detected the unintentionally offending comment and removed it the post has then gone through.
You might therefore try checking your post -very carefully- for a potentilly unacceptable comment. [You haven’t made some unflattering crack about Hirsch have you? – that kind of thing could certainly get you ‘blackballed on THIS site!]
Anyway remember the story of Robert the Bruce and ths spider and don’t give up; I’m keenly looking forward to your comments.
Hi Bob, I’ve looked over my comment and there are no references to the Necronomicon, Cthulhu, the Antichrist or Dathan the Hebrew Overseer.
Maybe the word ‘slanted’ might be deemed offensive? I’ll try changing that and give it another go.
Bob, Bruce, for some reason my reply was marked as spam.
I’ll try again later.
Hey Steve….they have been fixed.
HI STEVE:
You had so completely stolen The Work Horse’s thunder on this topic that I initially forgot that he too already had a comprehensive summary on this page so I have transferred copies of our original exchanges on your site to the spots below this post.
I apologise for the earlier oversight; but it will do The Work Horse no harm to have a bit of competition on one of his pages from a fellow expert such as yourself. Normally the only other movies ‘authority figure’ that gets any house room on a WH page is Hirsch – and after all what did HE really know?
Testing… testing… I hope my reply gets thru this time… lucky I made a copy.
Hi Bob, thanks for review my ‘all time top ticket selling’ video, info and trivia much appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters and stills.
Without Bruce’s stats on this page I wouldn’t have been able to create that video. I don’t think there’s another site on the net with so many films listed along with their ticket stats.
Like I mention on the video these are estimates, informed estimates. Even the studios themselves don’t keep track of ticket sales, or do they?
My next video will be worldwide adjusted grosses, problem is there are much fewer classic films listed because worldwide grosses are hard to find for them. For instance Samson and Delilah was huge in the USA and I’m sure worldwide too but the stats aren’t available. I would guess at least a billion dollars worldwide for Samson, adjusted.
So my video will be slanted towards modern cinema, unfair I know but that’s the way it is. By the way I’m using some of Bruce’s calculations mostly for the few classics, my own and other sources too, for the adjusted to 2019 grosses.
Hi Bob, thanks for review my ‘all time top ticket selling’ video, info and trivia much appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters and stills.
Without Bruce’s stats on this page I wouldn’t have been able to create that video. I don’t think there’s another site on the net with so many films listed along with their ticket stats.
Like I mention on the video these are estimates, informed estimates. Even the studios themselves don’t keep track of ticket sales, or do they?
Here’s a thought – many classic movies were re-released successfully over the years, how would the chart look if we only counted the tickets sold on the very first release of each film? Would Gone With the Wind still be no.1?
My next video will be worldwide adjusted grosses, problem is there are much fewer classic films listed because worldwide grosses are hard to find for them. For instance Samson and Delilah was huge in the USA and I’m sure worldwide too but the stats aren’t available. I would guess at least a billion dollars worldwide for Samson, adjusted.
So my video will be leaning more towards modern cinema, unfair I know but that’s the way it is. I’m using some of Bruce’s calculations mostly for the few classics, my own and other sources too, for the adjusted to 2019 grosses.
My reply has arrived at last (it may have been stuck in traffic). 🙂
Thanks Bruce, or whoever was working the UMR night shift. 😉
Btw you can delete the near duplicate 12.36pm comment if you like.
Btw thanks for the video share (and use of stats), much appreciated.
Hey Steve….better late than never. I will go back and delete the 12:36 comment…after I catch up on these comments….if I ever catch up…lol.