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Best Weekend NeverWhy journalists don't account for inflation when they report box office records.
Posted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 7:03 AM ETRead more from Slate's Summer Movies special issue.
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Thank. You.
This phenomenon has annoyed me for years, and this article did a fine job outlining the case against the "Number of current, unadjusted-for-inflation dollars raked in" standard for gauging the historic popularity of a film.
I would love to see a statistics guru like Nate Silver weigh in on this. As Zachary points out, a true barometer of the most popular films of all time should also take in the percentage of Americans who saw the film. I would bet good money that a greater percentage of Americans saw Gone with the Wind in 1939 than will see Up this year, for example.
There should be a formula for weighting adjusting-for-inflation dollars, percentage of population who saw the film, and possibly other factors to arrive at an approximation of what films were actually the most well-attended in the context of their release date. Only nerds would pay attention to such a score, so what's the harm?
-- MadameLibn
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