Pennywise v. Pazuzu
I posted a simple graph on Twitter comparing the U.S. box office gross of It (2017) with that of The Exorcist (1973), showing both unadjusted dollars and dollars adjusted for ticket price. (The data came from Box Office Mojo.)
My tweet was a response to the news story that It has outgrossed The Exorcist, making the new Stephen King adaptation the highest-grossing R-rated horror movie of all time, by U.S. box office. While the news stories did point out that the record is not adjusted for inflation, I thought it would be interesting to see just how much of a different inflation makes.
Obviously, inflation makes a huge difference. Box Office Mojo adjusts for ticket price, not the overall value of the dollar, so it is more directly relevant to movie grosses. The Exorcist has grossed $232,906,145 in the U.S. (this includes re-releases, which complicate things, but I will gloss over that fact). How many people saw The Exorcist in a movie theater?
In 1973, the average movie ticket price was $1.77, so the movie was seen about 131,585,393 times in movie theaters across the U.S (again, we'll ignore re-releases at higher ticket prices in later years).
Even if the average theatergoer saw The Exorcist more than once, that's a lot of people.
What about It? At this point (September 24, 2017), It's U.S. gross is $266,103,881. At an average 2017 ticket price of $8.89, that means about 29,932,945 tickets sold. Also a huge number, but The Exorcist sold more than 4 times as many tickets (in its release) as It has sold (so far).
None of this is intended to diminish It's spectacular success, or to ignore the fact that the movie will continue to make money theatrically. My point is pretty simple: an awful lot of people saw the Exorcist, and that movie's success should likewise not be diminished.
My tweet was a response to the news story that It has outgrossed The Exorcist, making the new Stephen King adaptation the highest-grossing R-rated horror movie of all time, by U.S. box office. While the news stories did point out that the record is not adjusted for inflation, I thought it would be interesting to see just how much of a different inflation makes.
Obviously, inflation makes a huge difference. Box Office Mojo adjusts for ticket price, not the overall value of the dollar, so it is more directly relevant to movie grosses. The Exorcist has grossed $232,906,145 in the U.S. (this includes re-releases, which complicate things, but I will gloss over that fact). How many people saw The Exorcist in a movie theater?
In 1973, the average movie ticket price was $1.77, so the movie was seen about 131,585,393 times in movie theaters across the U.S (again, we'll ignore re-releases at higher ticket prices in later years).
Even if the average theatergoer saw The Exorcist more than once, that's a lot of people.
What about It? At this point (September 24, 2017), It's U.S. gross is $266,103,881. At an average 2017 ticket price of $8.89, that means about 29,932,945 tickets sold. Also a huge number, but The Exorcist sold more than 4 times as many tickets (in its release) as It has sold (so far).
None of this is intended to diminish It's spectacular success, or to ignore the fact that the movie will continue to make money theatrically. My point is pretty simple: an awful lot of people saw the Exorcist, and that movie's success should likewise not be diminished.
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