Board 8 > Top ten highest grossing non-Disney films.

(+) Yeah! (+)

The "19" number includes Marvel, Pixar, and LucasArts as Disney, but not Phantom Menace. If you include PM, then it's 20.

Man, I'm not a 'casual movies are bad' guy or anything, but half of this list is...not so great.

The only good movies on the list are LotR and arguably Titanic or Harry Potter.

Give it time the house of mouse will acquire it all.

KamikazePotato posted...

Man, I'm not a 'casual movies are bad' guy or anything, but half of this list is...not so great.

half?
Evillordexdeath posted...

The only good movies on the list are LotR and arguably Harry Potter.

I wouldn't argue it but you could

LotR is very good. Titanic isn't my thing but it's a good movie. Harry Potter isn't great but it's not bad. Haven't seen Fast and Furious.

The rest, yeah.

This list isn't inflation-adjusted, is it?

Lots of mediocre recent movies!

this is our culture

This is the adjusted-for-inflation version.

1 - Gone with the Wind - $3,739,000,000 - 1939
2 - Avatar - $3,286,000,000 - 2009
3 - Titanic - $3,108,000,000 - 1997
4 - Star War - $3,071,000,000 - 1977
5 - Avengers: Endgame - $2,823,000,000 - 2019
6 - The Sound of Music - $2,572,000,000 - 1965
7 - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - $2,511,000,000 - 1982
8 - The Ten Commandments - $2,377,000,000 - 1956
9 - Doctor Zhivago - $2,253,000,000 - 1965
10 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $2,221,000,000 - 2015

Seginustemple posted...

this is our culture

It's just marketing. All kinds of great and creative movies get made both in the States and abroad, they just don't end up making as much money as the stuff on this list. I'd rather it wasn't that way, but it's not so bad.

Huh, for some reason I didn't realize that Star Wars had that much mainstream success straight out of the gate!

LordoftheMorons posted...

Huh, for some reason I didn't realize that Star Wars had that much mainstream success straight out of the gate!

Yeah it was a monster hit when it first release but that number also includes reissues.

How many of these are non-Disney but now Disney properties?

Return of the King sure does make this poll just a wee bit trivial doesn't it

LordoftheMorons posted...

Huh, for some reason I didn't realize that Star Wars had that much mainstream success straight out of the gate!

My mom was 8 or 9 when Star Wars was released in theaters and she still speaks glowingly of going to see it multiple times when it came out - it was a earth-shattering hit, just a huge fucking deal. It was well-received by critics too - I feel like it's easy to forget this but Star Wars was a Best Picture nominee!

What exactly is the poll asking?

KamikazePotato posted...

This is the adjusted-for-inflation version.

1 - Gone with the Wind - $3,739,000,000 - 1939
2 - Avatar - $3,286,000,000 - 2009
3 - Titanic - $3,108,000,000 - 1997
4 - Star War - $3,071,000,000 - 1977
5 - Avengers: Endgame - $2,823,000,000 - 2019
6 - The Sound of Music - $2,572,000,000 - 1965
7 - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - $2,511,000,000 - 1982
8 - The Ten Commandments - $2,377,000,000 - 1956
9 - Doctor Zhivago - $2,253,000,000 - 1965
10 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $2,221,000,000 - 2015

Gone with the Wind's inflation-adjusted numbers are so insane that it's sort of difficult for me to wrap my head around - like it makes me wonder if adjusting for inflation doesn't really give an accurate picture either. Like, if Avatar, Star Wars 7, and Endgame all can't beat it, nothing will.

It's mildly annoying to me that it's always revenue that's reported rather than tickets sold - would give us a better idea of how popular the movie actually was, given the moving target of ticket prices.

Gone with the Wind in theaters FOREVER and was rereleased in theaters several times.

Paratroopa1 posted...

My mom was 8 or 9 when Star Wars was released in theaters and she still speaks glowingly of going to see it multiple times when it came out - it was a earth-shattering hit, just a huge fucking deal. It was well-received by critics too - I feel like it's easy to forget this but Star Wars was a Best Picture nominee!

Star Wars was actually the favorite to win Best Picture that year, if I remember my Oscar history correctly! Annie Hall beating it was actually considered a pretty big upset.

In regards to Gone With the Wind, it should also be mentioned that tickets for its initial run would have have been much more expensive than the typical movie ticket. Big epics like that were released differently than other films back in those days, almost as if they were theatrical events. They would have tickets that cost $25 and up when adjusted for inflation, although I'm not sure what the exact numbers for Gone with the Wind are.

Yesmar_ posted...

In regards to Gone With the Wind, it should also be mentioned that tickets for its initial run would have have been much more expensive than the typical movie ticket. Big epics like that were released differently than other films back in those days, almost as if they were theatrical events. They would have tickets that cost $25 and up when adjusted for inflation, although I'm not sure what the exact numbers for Gone with the Wind are.

Yeah you can't really get an accurate list because of stuff like this. Trying to rank media over decades is pretty much impossible. Times change way too much.

What Id like to see is a post-home video inflation adjusted list, as that seems to be what made the biggest difference as films stopped running for years and years with multiple rereleases and just sold copies on video instead. For instance, Ghostbusters made roughly $820 million adjusted for inflation worldwide, and was the highest grossing film that year, by modern standards that would be on the low end of top yearly grossers, so I think from about the 80s onwards you can have these more direct comparisons. Of course it still wont be exact due to the ever decreasing home video release window and the rise of streaming. A lot closer though.

Doing a quick peruse of the top 100 list, here's a list of non-sequel/franchise movies in the top 100 domestic gross.

Bold are non-Disney ones. By my count, it's 13/100 non-sequel/franchise. And 7/100 non-Disney non-sequel/franchise.

Titanic
The Lion King (2019)
Beauty and the Beast
E.T.
The Lion King (1994 - animated)
The Passion of the Christ
Inside Out
American Sniper
Alice in Wonderland
Forrest Gump
The Sixth Sense
Up
Inception

This reminds me of AV Club's series about the top-grossing films of each year domestically, starting from 1960. They did make it to 2020, I haven't seen if they wrote about the new Spidey film yet.

Also I watched 1979's top domestic grosser Kramer vs. Kramer yesterday. Very well-made piece of pop entertainment.

I actually found this very detailed topic on another board about GWTW's release:

https://forums.boxofficetheory.com/topic/20886-gone-with-the-wind-1939-box-office20-million-tickets-sold-in-the-first-year/

It looks like tickets in its initial run were only .75 for a matinee and $1.00 for an evening show, which comes out to $15/$20 in today's money, so not as bad as I thought, but still much more expensive than the average movie ticket at the time, and it would have been nothing but these prices for a year.