Movie Boxoffice of the future

Avatar sold 95 million tickets in the USA, almost a 1/3 of the population. Not as many as the classic movies before 1982 (E.T.) or Titanic in 1997.

Avatar made $730m in the USA, and $800m in EU, plus a bundle in Russia, China, Japan, S. Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, etc.

But even the record setting numbers are still a fairly small percentage of China, and almost non-existent in India and Africa. It made a good showing in Latin America where most movies are ripped off and sold on pirate DVD. It's difficult to imagine watching AVATAR on a grainy pirated DVD.

There was a lot of improvement in Arab countries where public entertainment (except for traditional fairs and camel races) is usually avoided.

Do you think you will live to see the day when a movie sells a billion box office tickets worldwide? The population is almost 7 billion now. Billions of people see TV events off and on. Sports, royal weddings, funerals and some TV shows. Or do you think the movie on a special screen as a commercial art form is limited in it's growth.

What kind of movie do you think it will be? Romance - Adventure - World Themes - Animation- Political - Fantasy - Family - Low Brow Shlock - Historical ?

Total	Est. Tickets	Year^
Gone with the Wind	200 million	1939
Star Wars	178	1977^
The Sound of Music	142	1965
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial	142	1982^
The Ten Commandments	131	1956
Titanic	128	1997
Jaws	128	1975
Doctor Zhivago	124	1965
The Exorcist	111	1973^
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	109	1937^
101 Dalmatians	100	1961^
The Empire Strikes Back	98	1980^
Ben-Hur	98	1959
Avatar	95	2009

The carrot^ after the year includes multiple showings in later years. Probably the only movie that will ever sell more tickets than the population at large is Gone With the Wind, but movies were almost uncontested as entertainment in 1939.

Quote: pacomartin

Do you think you will live to see the day when a movie sells a billion box office tickets worldwide? The population is almost 7 billion now. Billions of people see TV events off and on. Sports, royal weddings, funerals and some TV shows. Or do you think the movie on a special screen as a commercial art form is limited in it's growth.

At some point we will get a billion, but not anytime soon. Most of the world is too poor to care about movies. Here is an interesting statistic: half of the 7 billion people in the world have yet to make their first telephone call. (I forget where I saw that a few years ago.) Again half lives on <$1/day and a good bit of the rest live on <$2. So you are really talking about 3 billion people in the market to see a film.

Movies used to be about more than the film. Way back seeing a movie was the best way to sit in an air conditioned building for a few hours cheaply. Personally I do not see the return to the "blockbuster" of the past in an era where 10 screens is small. I instead see a two-track system developing. "Hollywood" who seems to forget writing a good story and instead spending money on special effects. Then there is an "indie" track who must tell a good story because there is no real budget for fancy sets and effects.

This is not to say you will not get 1-2 blockbusters a year, and one will be that billion people film you ask about. But like every other market, segmentation is the name of the game for now.

My best guess is that AVATAR was seen by 400 million in theaters, but that is just some wild guesses about ticket prices around the world.

Thank you for that, I found it strange that the most recent movies always seem to be breaking box office records. Going by "tickets sold" takes inflation into account, and it's nice to see some older movies on there too.

Quote: AZDuffman

Here is an interesting statistic: half of the 7 billion people in the world have yet to make their first telephone call. (I forget where I saw that a few years ago.)

I did some research on this statistic and it is widely believed to be an urban legend. Telephones are pretty significant around the world, and even remote areas have some mobile service. They charge up phones with bicycles or car batteries if there is no electricity.

But I do agree that most of the world is too poor to care about movies. This was the biggest movie in history (worldwide attendance), and it it still is about 1 in 18-20 people in the world who have seen it.

Certainly if Prince William gets married in 2012 a billion people will see it on television. It does seem as if China has the potential to send a few hundred million people to the boxoffice. If the USA could sell 200 million tickets to Gone With the Wind when there were 130 million people (obviously a lot of women went several times) then we might see a billion ticket sales inside of a the next two decades.

I found a quote from 2007 that says China now has only 1,325 theaters with 3,034 screens—about 1 screen per 428,477 people. (In contrast, the United States has roughly 6,100 cinemas and 37,700 screens—about 1 screen per 8,100 people.) They obviously built hundreds of theaters in China in the last three years, because Boxofficemojo lists the following revenue as the highest in the foreign market (for Avatar).

$182,238,768 China
$155,103,976 France and Algeria, Monaco, Morocco and Tunisia
$148,457,109 Japan
$135,526,317 Germany
$134,389,317 United Kingdom and Ireland and Malta

In 2000, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is still the only non-english film to break $100 million in USA domestic box office probably sold less than $10 million in box office in mainland china, while Hero made $30 million in China in the year 2004 and another $4 million in Taiwan, but was not nearly as successful in the USA or Europe.

Quote: pacomartin

Quote: AZDuffman

Here is an interesting statistic: half of the 7 billion people in the world have yet to make their first telephone call. (I forget where I saw that a few years ago.)

I did some research on this statistic and it is widely believed to be an urban legend. Telephones are pretty significant around the world, and even remote areas have some mobile service. They charge up phones with bicycles or car batteries if there is no electricity.

Never researched it, but here is some data on lines per 1,000 people. The important thing to remember, IMHO, is that when a place is really poor, there is no one they will want or need to call anyways. When they do call it is often expensive and unreliable. I had a college professor who was at a university in China in the early 1980s or so and he stated the phones were so bad that it was less trouble to walk across campus than to call.

Urban legend or not you make the call (pun sort of intended but not totally :-) )

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_mai_percap-media-telephone-mainlines-per-capita

Keep in mind that the current population of the entire Western Hemisphere (North & South America) plus Western Europe is 1.337 billion, while China is 1.330 billion So even if you are talking about a small percentage of Chinese people, you are still talking about a lot of people.

Wall St Journal said While Avatar overshadowed the domestic blockbusters, China's film industry is growing fast. Official statistics from the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) show that China produced and screened 456 films in 2009, among which nine films exceeded 100 million yuan ($14.64 million) in box office revenues in 2009.

For them to get to $182 million is pretty amazing.


"1 billion customers" supposes every Chinese is a potential consumer. But according to the National Bureau of Statistics in China, the average yearly wage of the nation is 16,024 yuan (about $2,000, or $5 a day per capita). Only the thin stratosphere of Chinese society can afford to spend on the scale of consumers in developed countries. Expensive film tickets and legitimate digital video discs (DVDs) are only accessible to that upper echelon.

"There are really only about 150 million [people] in China who regularly go to see movies in cinemas. So that means that the market is very small," said a Warner China HG Corp executive. (WCHG is a recently established joint venture among state-owned China Film, Warner Brothers and Heng Dian Group. It is, as such, the only production-cum-distribution company that has a large foreign component, and yet, in the eyes of state regulation, is still considered Chinese.)

The film market is small. It is also hermetic. Although the WTO has knocked down the main Chinese trade barriers (almost every block in Chinese cities has a Starbucks now), the ones protecting the entertainment industry are still standing strong.

Rather than a product, film in China is considered an ideological vessel, and the control of information and thought is still paramount in a communist state.

The list of official and unofficial regulations is long and tedious for foreign film executives. China lets in a maximum of 20 foreign films (generally blockbusters) a year. Once in, the film must secure distribution. As yet, there are only 2,668 screens in all of mainland China.

Even when a film finally reaches the screen, it can be pulled off any time the government decides to hold an impromptu Chinese film festival (also known as blackout period).


I think that China is the key to if a movie will ever sell 1 billion tickets worldwide. India has that huge domestic market, but I don't know if they will see be able to purchase 100's of millions of tickets for a foreign film.

Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing film of all time if you take inflation into account.

The only good thing that came out of Avatar is a technology that will help the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres bridge the gap between crappy CG and realistic CG. That is if the cost of using it drops a ton.

Hollywood is and always will be a business, and this will always play a key role in what movies make it huge. Once in awhile you'll get an indy film that hits the nail on the head when it comes to overall quality, but of course once you have budget limitations it reduces the types of films you can create.

From what I understand the total published cost of creating a film doesn't take into account marketing, which can be quite a chunk of change.

I'd like to see an epic, with big battle scenes, adventure, etc. but with a story that can compete with the modern drama focused movies when it comes to depth and the quality of the acting. Gladiator was entertaining but I don't believe it fits this category, especially after having taken Roman History last semester which shined a light on all the liberties taken with historical records.

The most expensive film ever made taking into account inflation was War and Peace made in 1968 . The 120,000 soldiers used in the battle scenes would obviously be created by computer graphic imagery today. Versions of the film are as long as 8 hours.

Although it is impossible to imagine making a film with 120,000 extras, it just goes to show how much our idea of epic film making changed in the last three decades. Since Cleopatra, Ten Commandments, or even Titanic in 1997.

China recently made Red Cliff 赤壁 about a significant battle fought in 208 AD that cost $80 million. Perhaps the first film seen by a billion people will be Chinese.

Quote: pacomartin

The most expensive film ever made taking into account inflation was War and Peace made in 1968 . The 120,000 soldiers used in the battle scenes would obviously be created by computer graphic imagery today. Versions of the film are as long as 8 hours.

Although it is impossible to imagine making a film with 120,000 extras, it just goes to show how much our idea of epic film making changed in the last three decades. Since Cleopatra, Ten Commandments, or even Titanic in 1997.

China recently made Red Cliff Ô•Ç about a significant battle fought in 208 AD that cost $80 million. Perhaps the first film seen by a billion people will be Chinese.

Hollywood gave up on the epic years ago. "Gettysburg" was the last film that didn't worry about trying to tell a complex story in 120 minutes and that was only because it was made-for-TV until someone noticed it was too good and should be released in theaters. Theatre owners simply refuse a movie that is too long, rated NC-17, etc. So as a result of economics and the short atention-span of today's Amercian we will never see the likes of "The Ten Commandmants" or "War and Rememberance" (on TV) again.