Darth Cruel
Super Freak
I have gathered from the never-ending "most popular movie" argument that you really can not hope to judge, accurately, any movie's exact popularity. There are simply too many variables.
I have read the argument that you should go by ticket sales. And one of the main arguments for this has been that it works fairly accurately for the popularity of books and music albums.
It stands to reason that it would work for those avenues. But it would not for movies. Movies, for one, have a great many more "multiple" buyers, meaning that there are a lot more pople that will pay to see a movie more than once than there are people who will buy a book or CD more than once.
Further, I have read that different movies draw crowds more at different times of the day. So the average ticket price would be different from movie-to-movie depending on when was the most popular time for crowds to view the movie. Even second-run thater tickets would have to be considered.
There were a few other major variables that I read about, but I don't remember them.
The bottom line is...even WITH perfect counts on how many tickets a movie sold...that is really not much better a measuring stick than gross revenue even if it is not adjusted for inflation.
And to talk about ticket sales, I have seen an estimate that Star Wars dogged all other movies in number of tickets sold with approximately 173 million over Titanic's 131 million (estimated). But Star Wars had two releases and (I feel it is a safe assumption) many more multi-ticket buyers. And If you add in the second release...E.T. beats out Titanic with 135 Million. So these numbers can not accurately estimate the number of individuals who watched the movies. And this would be a necessity to determine that movie's popularity.
I think the best we can do is to keep our arguments for these movies in perspective.
One movie made the most money. But nothing can be inferred about it's popularity based on that other than "lots of people liked it".
Another may be estimated to have sold more tickets overall, but no inference about the popularity of the movie can be made by that, either.
That is how I am seeing the "big picture" at this point and I am curious about whether anyone feels they know of a more accurate way to make this judgement.
I have read the argument that you should go by ticket sales. And one of the main arguments for this has been that it works fairly accurately for the popularity of books and music albums.
It stands to reason that it would work for those avenues. But it would not for movies. Movies, for one, have a great many more "multiple" buyers, meaning that there are a lot more pople that will pay to see a movie more than once than there are people who will buy a book or CD more than once.
Further, I have read that different movies draw crowds more at different times of the day. So the average ticket price would be different from movie-to-movie depending on when was the most popular time for crowds to view the movie. Even second-run thater tickets would have to be considered.
There were a few other major variables that I read about, but I don't remember them.
The bottom line is...even WITH perfect counts on how many tickets a movie sold...that is really not much better a measuring stick than gross revenue even if it is not adjusted for inflation.
And to talk about ticket sales, I have seen an estimate that Star Wars dogged all other movies in number of tickets sold with approximately 173 million over Titanic's 131 million (estimated). But Star Wars had two releases and (I feel it is a safe assumption) many more multi-ticket buyers. And If you add in the second release...E.T. beats out Titanic with 135 Million. So these numbers can not accurately estimate the number of individuals who watched the movies. And this would be a necessity to determine that movie's popularity.
I think the best we can do is to keep our arguments for these movies in perspective.
One movie made the most money. But nothing can be inferred about it's popularity based on that other than "lots of people liked it".
Another may be estimated to have sold more tickets overall, but no inference about the popularity of the movie can be made by that, either.
That is how I am seeing the "big picture" at this point and I am curious about whether anyone feels they know of a more accurate way to make this judgement.
