Dollar Figures: Meaningless, Useless And Misleading If Not Inflated
On Aug. 17, every outlet in America that ran reports on weekend gross box-office receipts fell for a lie. The movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day did not have the highest single-day box office ever; Avengers: Endgame did.
Failure to inflate historic monetary figures is a journalistic class 3 felony. Direct dollar comparisons are meaningless, useless and misleading.
The box office figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Incompetent and lazy journalists commit the sin of comparing uninflated dollar figures every day, to the disservice of their readers and listeners.
The Spider-Man single-day gross is in second place by $27 million. The box office reporting articles excused the lie by saying (in some cases) the figures were “unadjusted.” There is no excuse for unadjusted figures. I translated historic grosses to 2026 dollars in an hour,[1] using publicly available data. “Journalists” could do the same, and they’re being paid to do it[2].
Nothing But The Facts
This list is not comprehensive. I based it on a non-adjusted listing of the top 100 films, so I have no idea how many historic films would qualify.
Inflation-Adjusted First-Day Gross
| Rank | Film | Inflation Adjusted 1st Day Gross |
| 1 | Avengers: Endgame | $196,827,051.25 |
| 2 | Spider-Man: Brand New Day | $169,843,039.00 |
| 3 | Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force … | $162,435,384.55 |
| 4 | Spider-Man: No Way Home | $146,357,654.40 |
| 5 | Gone with the Wind | $141,750,000.00 |
| 6 | Harry Potter and the Deathly … | $136,606,678.50 |
| 7 | Avengers: Endgame | $136,580,152.50 |
| 8 | Star Wars Ep. VIII: The Last … | $136,544,988.26 |
| 9 | Avengers: Infinity War | $135,746,730.64 |
| 10 | The Avengers | $118,264,368.29 |
Four Avengers films, two Spider-Man films and two Star Wars films. The American Public is nothing if not consistent.
By comparison, among the biggest films from the past, only Gone with the Wind made the top 10.
Inflation-Adjusted First-Day Gross
| Gone With The Wind | $141,750,000.00 |
| Titanic | $71,595,327.50 |
| Avatar | $42,631,578.95 |
| Star Wars IV | $11,658,562.50 |
| Sound Of Music | $6,398,305.71 |
Tickets sold
| 1 | Avengers: Endgame | 13,121,803 |
| 2 | Spider-Man: Brand New Day | 11,322,869 |
| 3 | Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force … | 10,829,026 |
| 4 | Spider-Man: No Way Home | 9,757,177 |
| 5 | Gone With The Wind | 9,450,000 |
| 6 | Harry Potter And The Deathly … | 9,107,112 |
| 8 | Star Wars Ep. VIII: The Last … | 9,102,999 |
| 9 | Avengers: Infinity War | 9,049,782 |
| 10 | The Avengers | 7,884,291 |
FOOTNOTES
[1] Using CPI to inflate movie gross numbers is lazy and dumb. Calculate the number of tickets sold by dividing historic gross figures by the ticket price at the time, then multiply by today’s ticket price. Harder? Yes. Better? Yes. I hope journalism has not reached the point where easy is the criterion for important tasks.
[2] And by “it” I mean perform actual journalism
Paul E. Schindler Jr.
