OK. Call me anal, but I was curious about horror box office figures. You know when you see stats that say so-and-so beat so-and-so if an earlier film's take was adjusted for inflation. Anyone know how to go about this? For instance, Halloween (1978) took roughly $47 million in 1978. If adjusted, would that beat, say, whatever Saw IVXI is going to take? ... I know, I should get out more.

Here is a handy US dollar inflation calculator to use:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

It says one dollar in 1978 is worth roughly $3.31 today. So HALLOWEEN's $47,000,000 take would be close to $155,570,000 today, a figure higher than the gross of any SAW film.

EDIT: This Box Office Mojo Adjusted chart is also good in helping find a closer figure. They have a little calculator up in the right hand corner that will give you the average ticket price for any given year. For 1978, they offer an average price of $2.34, which means roughly 20 million people in the US saw HALLOWEEN. Multiply that by 2009's ticket average ($7.18) and you get $143 million or so. Again, much higher than any SAW flick.

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted...._yr=1978&p=.htm

Yeah, I hate it how they always say, with each new 007 film, that it's "the highest-grossing 007 ever!" Well, yeah...because of the ticket prices. At today's average ticket price, THUNDERBALL would've grossed $537 million during its theatrical run. So take that, TOMORROW NEVER DIES!

Thanks. That was exactly what I was looking for!

Wow! I paid two and a half bucks to see HALLOWEEN in 1978? Does anyone, even in Hollywood, believe movies are four and a half times better now than they were then?

Yeah, it is pretty amazing to see that adjusted totals for films like JAWS and THE EXORCIST have them making close to a billion dollars. Fewer people go to the movies today, yet Hollywood seems focused solely on pumping out the numbers and "This is the no. 1 film of all-time." I remember reading some book (I think about Times Square's history in NYC) and they said in the 30s and 40s that theaters would sometimes run 24 hours and big flicks would be packed at all showings. It is comforting to know more people actually saw SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT in the theater over TRANSFORMERS.

On a somewhat related note, I'm amazed that VHS and Beta machines cost upwards of $1000 back in the day, and yet folks complain that Blu-ray players that cost a couple hundred bucks today are too expensive.

Vincent

Among other factors, VHS and Beta had the novelty of being something completely new to the home market, and didn't have an already-established, cheap, "good-enough-for-most-folks" alternative to compete with like BluRay does (not to mention we're living in an era where a few minutes of searching and a reasonably fast internet connection can get you almost anything, either legally or no...).

I suppose you can throw a few decades of widely-available, cheaply-built, commodity-priced electronics into the fray, too, in changing perceptions.