And we’re back for 2016. Hope you all had an enjoyable holiday break!
So it really isn’t any surprise that Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens is now the number one movie moneymaker of all time for the North American market, surpassing 2009’s Avatar. With all the pent up demand for a great Star Wars movie (Sorry, prequels, you don’t count as great Star Wars movies!), it was inevitable that it would take the top spot on the chart.
While I definitely expected Star Wars to take the top spot, what I didn’t expect was how fast it happened. It took Avatar seven months of its original run, along with a $10-milllion re-release to reach $760.5 million total. Star Wars VII did it in only 20 days.
Now, one reason that SWVII jumped ahead of Avatar so quickly is that movie tickets cost more in 2015/16 than they did in 2009/10. On the all-time inflation adjusted list, Avatar is currently #14 and SWVII is at #21.
The true box office champion will always be 1939’s Gone With The Wind, which brought in an adjusted grow of $1.7 billion domestically. Remember, this was in the time before television when movie attendance was much higher than it is today. Perhaps more interestingly, the original 1977 Star Wars is #2 on the all-time adjusted list with an adjusted box office of $1.5 billion.
I must confess I did my part to help with the first Star Wars by seeing it 13 times in the theater the summer it came out.
Reading the list in a bit more depth, it’s no surprise that 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs weighs in at number 10. It was, after all, briefly the all-time box office champ – up until GWTW came out in 1939. But it’s #11 that has always surprised and delighted me – Disney’s 1961 version of 101 Dalmatians.