Why Titanic is unsinkable
I’ve got a piece on MSNBC today about The Dark Knight’s box office and why it probably won’t pass Titanic’s domestic record of $600 million and why it definitely won’t pass Titanic’s worldwide gross of $1.8 billion. The latter prediction is a no-brainer and the former prediction is the result of finding a similar film (blockbuster, summer, PG-13), with similar percentage drop-offs (daily, weekly) and plugging in The Dark Knight’s original weekly total. That film is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (the second one) and here’s how its percentages calculate with The Dark Knight’s original numbers:
Week | Box Office | % change |
1 | $238 million | |
2 | $110 million | -53.7% |
3 | $62 million | -43.5% |
4 | $37 million | -39.8% |
5 | $20 million | -46.5% |
6 | $13 million | -34.2% |
7 | $9 million | -30.6% |
8 | $6.7 million | -26.5% |
9 | $6.7 million | -0.6% |
10 | $3 million | -53.7% |
11 | $2 million | -35.3% |
12 | $1 million | -34.3% |
13 | $737, 903 | -44.1% |
14 | $492,181 | -33.3% |
15 | $306,137 | -37.8% |
16 | $196,540 | -35.8% |
17 | $187,892 | -4.4% |
18 | $201,984 | +7.5% |
19 | $759,460 | +276% |
20 | $603,771 | -20.5% |
21 | $454,035 | -24.8% |
22 | $273,329 | -39.8% |
The total? $515 million.
How accurate is this formula? It predicts $110 million for Dark Knight’s second week; the film wound up making $112 million. So not bad so far.
The Dark Knight might do better than this, of course. For one, its percentage drop-offs, thus far, aren’t quite as high as Pirates'. Plus it’s a better film, and so should have longer legs, etc., and there’s Oscar buzz. But Titanic looks safe.
Of course that's what they said in 1912.
COMMENTS
doc3osh wrote:
Comment posted on Mon. Aug 04, 2008 at 10:58 AM
doc3osh wrote:
Comment posted on Mon. Aug 04, 2008 at 11:05 AM
doc3osh wrote:
The above article shows actual ticket sales. Looking at that, you can see that Titanic sold 129M tickets while GWTW sold a staggering 202M tickets. So it seems like Titanic's popularity was 64% that of GWTW. But if you divide the ticket sales by the US population the year of release:
http://www.npg.org/facts/us...
(1997 vs 1939), you find that GWTW sold an amazing 1.54 tickets for EVERY HUMAN IN THE US at that time. In 1997, Titanic sold 0.48 tix per person living in the US. So GWTW was actually more than 3 times as popular as Titanic-- Titanic was half as popular as it looks if you don't adjust for population.
Ok I'll shut up now.
Comment posted on Mon. Aug 04, 2008 at 11:20 AM
doc3osh wrote:
Roughly speaking though, the All-Time Blockbuster List would probably look like this: GWTW, Snow White, Ten Commandments, Star Wars, Sound of Music, E.T., Jaws, Titanic
Comment posted on Mon. Aug 04, 2008 at 11:37 AM
anoymous wrote:
Comment posted on Fri. Aug 08, 2008 at 02:32 PM
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Mister B wrote:
http://www.ew.com/ew/articl...
The article writer agrees with you.
Comment posted on Mon. Aug 04, 2008 at 08:51 AM