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Insidb on 24 December 2015
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Wonktonodi said:
Insidb said:

Movies, like baseball games, used to be a very accesible form of entertainment. The price of each has risen significantly and outpaced the average American wage, making it easier to draw larger crowds for later films. When we adjust for inflation, numbers of tickets sold becomes the single-most important factor. Older films will always have an advantage in that area, until the wage-inflation trend reverses. Until it does, people will defer to other forms of entertainment, goods, or pirating, based upon each of those thing's greater cost effectiveness. You listed some key factors that have affected and hampered the effectiveness of theater showings, and I think those trends are significantly impacted by availability of disposable income. 

Much older movies have plenty of strong disadvantages as well. So I don't buy the disposable income argument. 

Much stronger competition within theaters. Hundreds of millions to tens of millions fewer people to see movies. And billions world wide.

 

Look at the top ten movies in the US adjusted for inflation. No one decade or set of circumstances is overly represented on the list. The first 7 movies, 7 different decades. So the price of movie compared to income doesn't overly favour one time period.

Pre television doesn't overly represent on the chart and in fact there are no movies from the 20s 

Releases don't explain it all either since 4 of the movies were only released once.

 

Expand the list 10 more places 6 decades covered and only two movies before the peak of minimum wages buying power,  though in this case only 2 movies weren't released, though avatar's is a bit of a joke considering it started like two weeks after it lay theaters and made only 10 million if it's 760 million.

 

Another 10 another 7 different decades. Another 7 that were released, though at least two of those releases were less than a million extra.

 

My conclusions from looking at that list is that no one time period is favored. No one set of circumstances less to any movie doing particularly better, other than movies being released making up a larger portion of the top 30 though they make up less than half of the top 100 with only 41 and of those 9 were from 2000 or later.

 

One further thing I've just observed. There are only 3 movies on the list from before 1940. Be that from the totals being unknown or fewer movies doing well I don't know, but considering the birth of a nation was the highest grossing movie before gone with the wind (unadjusted) I think data is missing.

I think the interplay has a significant effect: GWTW benefitted from multiple releases, over several years, and Titanic had a 3D re-release. The summer blockbusters (Star Wars, ET, Avatar, and Jaws) are well represented, but the others were pre-1975 fantasy/drama films that released to about half of today's population. In essence, movies have become more of a margin play today, because you just don't have the same volume of moviegoers. If we did, SWTFA would have already passed GWTW. I personally don't go to the theater often, because tickets seem overpriced to me and my friends, which indicates that there is a sentiment of a disproportion of the ticket cost to income. When I was younger and didn't make much money, tickets were about half to a third of what they are now and not a big deal to buy. This has only served to drive myself and others to spend money where it appears more effectively spent, as well as obtaining the media through other means.