dce@tekecs.UUCP (06/09/83)
Gross sales does not determine popularity of a movie (as with record album sales). You have to look at many other aspects of the situation, like population and price. If you consider the fact that Gone With the Wind cost less to see when it first came out, and that the population of the US was significantly smaller, and that distribution was not as widespread, you might see a big difference. Remember the thousands of gold records made in the 70's? Gold records are those with some amount of sales, not copies. That's why records went to $9.98 each. The top-100 records are based on number sold, so why shouldn't the most popular movies be based on the number of tickets sold or by percentage of population? David
arnold@gatech.UUCP (06/09/83)
Actually, the James Bond series of movies should be considered
for "most popular" (it may not win, but it should be considered).
They've made something like 12-14 James Bond movies. Considering the
first ones were made in the early 60's, and they're coming out with one
this summer, 20 years makes it the longest running group of movies.
Personnally, I enjoy a Star Wars movie more than James Bond,
but 20 movies is nothing to sneeze at.
BTW, have y'all noticed how the movie plots get further and further
away from the books? Ther early ones, Dr. No, Goldfinger, etc, followed
the books very closely. The later ones, like Live, and Let Die, The
Spy Who Loved Me, etc, seem to have retained only the titles.
Arnold Robbins
Arnold at GATech (CS Net)
Arnold.GATech at UDel-Relay (ARPA) School of ICS
...!{sb1, allegra}!gatech!arnold (uucp) Georgia Tech
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--
The parchment and quill pen of Arnold Robbinskevenb@tekid.UUCP (06/10/83)
It seems that the bottom line in this discussion revolves around Just how much money the movie is making. In other words hollywood is strictly interested in how much cash they make, not the popularity or memorability of a movie in itself. As far as the most popular movie, I would vote for Gone With the Wind , Casablanca, or one of the other classics. Will the Star Wars trilogy stand up to the test of time? Or have we all fallen victim to one of the best marketing efforts of all time? Certainly these movies have made someone alot of money, but what have they contributed to society? Keven Boyett tektronix!tekid!kevenb
mark@hp-kirk.UUCP (06/15/83)
#R:iwu1d:-12100:hp-kirk:11400003:000:729
hp-kirk!mark Jun 13 08:35:00 1983
Television (which doesn't sell tickets) uses per cent of viewing audience as
a criteria for judging a show's popularity. This criteria has many drawbacks
with regard to tv (such as time of show, what competing networks are showing,
etc.); however, these drawbacks don't apply to theaters and the criteria is a
good one (though the means of measuring it can be questioned).
A good means of evaluating the popularity of movies (that should be fairly
independent of when it was introduced) is to compare number of viewers with
the total available population.
"Death" Rowe
hp-pcd!hp-cvd!mark
Corvallis, Oregongrw@fortune.UUCP (06/18/83)
Ah, but the "what other networks are playing" modifier DOES
have an equivalent in movies. People will only see so many movies,
and if a lot of good ones are out at one time (as is the case now),
some of them will suffer. Perhaps (for example) War Games would
outsell ET if RotJ was not pulling away some of War Games' audience.
I don't think there really is a good objective measurement of
the "popularity" of a movie or a TV show (you'll never convince me
that Nielsen's ratings reflect reality), but number of tickets
sold does seem to be the best "rule of thumb" for movies. BTW,
I think RotJ wins by this standard as well, at least if you take
into account the length of time the movie has been out. Perhaps
the best equation is:
tickets-sold / days-since-release / size-of-current-market.
(For our rule-of-thumb judgement, size-of-market could be the
population of the US). Using this as a guide, what's the most
popular movie of all time? Probably still Return of the Jedi.
-Glenn