On Screen: The Box Office : Constant Collectible

A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a counter-top, through a hole in a wall or window. The term box office originated in 1776 when a theater would sell private boxes (seats) to theater goers. It was not until 1904 that the sense of total sales would come into play.

With year to year inflation, the rise of tickets amounts and the selection of viewing pleasure such as 3D, IMAX, etc help determine the cost of a ticket. In 1910 the average ticket price was $0.07 and in 2015 has risen to an average of $8.12 (I only wish it cost me that much). According to Box Office Mojo “In most cases you can calculate the estimated number of tickets sold for a given movie by taking its box office gross and dividing it by the average ticket price at the time it was released. To adjust it for inflation (or see what it might have made in the past), you then multiply the estimated number of tickets sold by the average ticket price of the year you are converting to.”

So in order to see what the estimated gross would be of a movie you would need to obtain the amount of ticket sales and unfortunately for many movies there is no data to help in figuring this out. Many movies prior the 1990’s would not differentiate the difference between openings, weekends, etc. As we continue to progress through the years we find another more and more ways to celebrate or mark a box office record. Was it released on Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Groundhog Day, Earth Day, etc.

We will never have an accurate rate of sales for all movies, but we are now living in the data era. Every company from Google, Apple to Amazon and others are on the hunt for our data so its fitting that movie numbers are tracked on how many us us see a movie on what day. This data will help Hollywood determine what movies to make that make profit, but some times theses movies are just terrible and hurt a franchise, such as Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to name a few (Thanks Michael Bay).

Recently Jurassic World had an opening weekend record of $208,806,270. This just edged out Marvel’s The Avengers which opened at $207,438,708 a difference of $1,367,562.

The top ten movie ticket gross has come since 2007.

Rank	Title (click to view)	Studio	Opening*	% of Total	Theaters	Avg.	Total Gross^	Date**
1	Jurassic World	Uni.	$208,806,270	80.8%	4,274	$48,855	$258,493,605	6/12/2015
2	Marvel’s The Avengers	BV	$207,438,708	33.3%	4,349	$47,698	$623,357,910	5/4/2012
3	Avengers: Age of Ultron	BV	$191,271,109	42.9%	4,276	$44,731	$445,730,903	5/1/2015
4	Iron Man 3	BV	$174,144,585	42.6%	4,253	$40,946	$409,013,994	5/3/2013
5	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2	WB	$169,189,427	44.4%	4,375	$38,672	$381,011,219	7/15/2011
6	The Dark Knight Rises	WB	$160,887,295	35.9%	4,404	$36,532	$448,139,099	7/20/2012
7	The Dark Knight	WB	$158,411,483	29.7%	4,366	$36,283	$533,345,358	7/18/2008
8	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	LGF	$158,074,286	37.2%	4,163	$37,971	$424,668,047	11/22/2013
9	The Hunger Games	LGF	$152,535,747	37.4%	4,137	$36,871	$408,010,692	3/23/2012
10	Spider-Man 3	Sony	$151,116,516	44.9%	4,252	$35,540	$336,530,303	5/4/2007

Chart Courtesy of Box Office Mojo

With Jurassic World passing Avengers Marvel had some fun in congratulating this accomplishment. created by Andy Park and tweeted out by Kevin Feige via his twitter account.

This is great because it takes us back to a time when filmmakers would publicly celebrate other filmmakers accomplishments in box office records.

Will we see more of these? I really hope so. With the continuation of growth at the theaters for blockbusters the dollar amount and views will go up and up and with Star Wars: The Force Awakens we will see another movie top the charts and possibly destroy the competition and hopefully we will find another poster or letter of congratulations.