Titanic grossed twice as much as the the next highest movie! And the figures aren’t adjusted for inflation so the disparity is even greater.
Leaving aside any question of artistic merit, how can it be that this movie managed to take in so much more than any other? I don’t recall any greater buzz compared to other blockbuster movies when it came out. Was there some special factor (such as a lack of any decent films about) that led to its success? Any ideas?
It was such a huge hit because pre-teen and teen-age girls will go see a movie more times than teen-age boys.
I know guys that went to see Star Wars 15 - 20 times (that’s paying for it in the theater).
But a young girl in love will go see the same movie every day for a month or until it leaves the theater, whichever comes first. And if it leaves one theater, she will follow it to another. Hell hath no fury like that of an adolescence girl in love and denied her daily dose of rapture and adoration of the screen figure of her choice.
The movie played well to [SIZE=4ALL[/SIZE] audiences.
If teen girls made that a 600 million (US) film then why wasn’t the Hillary Duff movie a 200 million dollar film? What other teen girl film has made a third of Titanic’s gross?
Then there is the world wide gross. People just loved that movie at that time.
Titanic is a very popular subject. I read once, and I don’t remember the source, that the subject of Titanic is second only to The Civil War for the number of books published in the US.
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Didn’t you just answer your own question? One of the big reasons “Titanic” appears to be so far ahead is inflation; all the other really popular movies were before 1997.
In fact, if you adjust for inflation, “Titanic” is not the top-grossing movie of all time in North America, anyway, and isn’t even second. Using constant dollars the #1 movie of all time is arguably still “Gone With the Wind” - a movie that in many ways is quite similar to “Titanic,” - a sweeping romantic epic based on a historical event, with a huge budget and sensational special effects.
Not sure about their accuracy, but adjusted for inflation, here’s one list I found of the REAL top grossing films of all time, adjusted to 2002 dollars, for North American gross revenues:
Gone With The Wind (1939) - $1,187 million
Star Wars (1977) - $1,026 million
The Sound Of Music (1965) - $824 million
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - $815 million
The Ten Commandments (1956) - $758 million
Titanic (1997) - $733 million
Jaws (1975) - $710 million
Ben-Hur (1959) - $629 million
Doctor Zhivago (1965) - $619 million
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937?) - $610 million
Note the “Titanic” style films that dominate the list; seven of the films are spectacular big-time epic films, and most of them were considered technically groundbreaking. The three that aren’t epics (E.T., Jaws, and Snow White) were all sensational special effect flicks. Of the seven historical epics most have strong romantic angles; actually, in four of them romance is the primary plot device.
Where “Titanic” is ahead is in OVERSEAS box office gross, and to some extent this can be explained just by the fact that “Titanic” was released and marketed overseas in its initial release to an extent the other films were not.
The notion that “Titanic” was popular only because teenaged girls went to see it 50 times is, IMHO, elitist horse crap based on the weird hostility the movie seems to evoke. As the list of popular movies clearly demonstrates, “Titanic” is exactly the sort of film that we would fully expect to make this list, a big-budget historically based romance. Granted, some such movies make more than others, but let’s be honest; “Titanic” was a better movie than “Pearl Harbor.” People of all ages have been flocking to see such movies for more than sixty years and they will continue to flock to see them for sixty more. Hell, I enjoyed “Titanic” and I’m an adult male.
Yes but how did you account for Gone with the Wind having so many re-issues.
I’ll wager you looked at the total for GWTW and called them all 1939 dollars. I saw GWTW in a theatre in 1989. The money for my ticket is included in that total.
Same with most of the top ten films. In fact Titanic has never been re-issued.
Compare and contrast Titanic to The Phantom Menace. Most people thought The Phantom Menace would beat Titanic in box office. TPM came out a few years after Titanic and certainly had more screens, a slightly higher average ticket price and benifited from world wide distribution just as Titanic did. Why didn’t TPM beat Titanic? (Well TPM sucked dude!) Yet nobody will say that Titanic made it’s money due to the quality of the film.
Don’t you think that’s a slight exaggeration? I was 15 when Titanic hit theaters, and yeah, I was all “eeee! Leo!”, had pictures from the movie taped in the locker that my best friend and I shared, etc. etc., but we saw it 3, maybe 4 times in the theaters, certainly not 15-20 much less going every day, for Pete’s sake. There is life outside the latest obsession, even for teenage girls.
Also, you don’t have to be a guy to see Star Wars multiple times in the theaters. I’ve given those flicks more money than I ever did Titanic.
First of all, I knew a girl in school whose grandparents were on the Titanic, were very rich, and left the ship in a lifeboat that was half full. They were unaware that there were not enough lifeboats and went to Washington D.C. to testify to that fact. No, her grandfather did not dress as a woman.
Secondly, the story of the Titanic has always been one of morbid curiosity. It was a major disaster, and anyone who read about it then, or now, has a gut reaction to the poor souls on that ship.
Thirdly, Hollywood hype. I worked for the studios in those days when the film was being made “it is WAY over budget”, “they will NEVER see a dime” “they will have to sell $800 million in tickets to break even, if they are lucky” “who the hell is Leo D. whoever?”
And lastly, the story of the Titanic has always been one of morbid curiosity. It was a major disaster, and anyone who read about it then, or now, has a gut reaction to the poor souls on that ship.
Nobody should ever forget that world history, and saavy Hollywood marketing, sometimes sells films that should be a bomb.
Actually, there is a rather simple explantion for Titanic’s success. James Cameron sold his soul to a certain eldritch entity, that shall remain nameless, to allow what would otherwise be a total dud of a movie, into a very large commerical success.
Titanic made its money due to the quality of the film.
There were other, several other, factors, but it is a high-quality film, which helped. This revisionist “I think it is crap, therefore it is crap, therefore everybody else thinks it’s crap, except for the idiot teenage girls who went to see it” attitude is, well, crap.
It’s a good movie. a
Not that I wasn’t pulling for L.A. Confidential come Oscar time, but at least it got nominated.
Actually, I thought it was crap. That’s not revisionist, that’s what I thought after the first time I saw it. Some of the characters made no sense to me.
Because young girls went to see it for Leonardo, women went to see the romance, and men went to see Leonardo sink to the bottom of the ocean with shit eating grins on their faces. If Celine Dion went to the bottom of the ocean with him, men would have seen it as many times as women.
Having said that, I DO actually have a favorite line from this movie:
Actually, I saw it a second time because of Kate Winslet. I would pay $7.50 to watch her boil a pot of pasta for 3 hours, if her clothes came off for a couple of minutes in the middle. Sure, watching Leo sink near the end was cool, but I was in it for the Kate.
