I'm disappointed, but not surprised in your measurement of success. Many tout record box office takings as clear success but I rather think that really reflects on inflation (both real and artificial).
Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers. MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison.
So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not breaking any records.
A big (huge) driver is the Asian markets, with China having allowed more foreign movies in - and a huge upsurge of cinemas being built there. A lot of (blockbuster) movies are actively made nowadays with the huge Chinese market in mind, and / or are being co-produced and / or funded by Chinese companies.
(There's some common tropes in that category; PG-12, if that rating, has to feature at least one major Chinese city and one or two Chinese actors, and the Chinese are never the bad guys. These things also apply to the Americans. Basically, the two propaganda machines combined.)
I have also noticed a decent amount of new releases have both a Chinese and American production company associated with the movie, and there appear to be cultural and character references that resonate with both.
From the data in your link [1] Cinema attendance looks very healthy, and in fact in 2018 was at it's highest level since 1971 and is more than tripple it's low point in 1984. That much better than I was expecting and frankly in my eyes kills the 'Cinema is dying' meme stone dead. I don't understand how you can be looking at the same table and coming to such a different conclusion.
I'm not saying cinema is dying, at all. I'm reacting to a statement that said "cinema is having its most successful years ever". That is only true in gross and that's only true because tickets are so expensive.
If you're going to make qualitative claims, where the price of a unit is largely fixed at a point in time, I think you have to compare quantity of sales, not gross.
It's all marketing wank. A way for producers to pomp around with their "record"-breaking titles. And at a financial level, sure, whatever... But that's not how these statements are used.
The problem with cinema attendance, at least here in the United States, is you can't trust the numbers anymore.
Take AMC, they have their A List that allows you to see 3 movies a week for a monthly fee, if you head over to /r/AMCsAList/ you will find a good number of people that will go see movies they have little interest in JUST to use all their 'free' movies each week so now you have someone that may have seen 2-3 movies a month, seeing 12 movies. Occasionally you'll even see threads over there where people brag about how many weeks long their streak of seeing all their movies is.
Similarly there was MoviePass (I think it's mostly dead now) that was allowing people to do the same for over a year.
Those aren't the numbers I see [1]. For domestic US, Endgame is in 18th place.
Why not worldwide? Even the US numbers are rickety. There are multiple ways to account for inflation, multiple ways of record counting for sales, trying to factor in re-showings, etc. Adding on multiple currencies and economies is a power of extra complexity.
> There's tons more money out there now
Yes. Money. My whole thing here has been about weighing success by monetary takings. It doesn't necessarily track. The price of a ticket has far outstripped what retail indexed inflation. Tickets, after inflation, are eighteen times more expensive than their 1950s counterparts. You only a eighteenth of the 1950s audience to gross the same.
But while we're talking about bullshit headlines, looking up Endgame renders some gems [2]. Things like "Fastest to $1bn" aren't just historically incomparable because of inflation but because distribution has changed significantly. Movies in the US used to have months of lead-time ahead of the global market. There still is for many languages. Modern studios recognise the waste and damage in this. Endgame was globally available (to over half the population) within 4 days. "Highest Opening Weekend" grossses also have the same problem.
The US economy hasn't grown much, adjusted for inflation, compared to the world economy. That's primarily because of the rest of the world was much poorer.
The original statement of Endgame beating Avatar is still incorrect. Which is what started this chain of comments in the first place. Along with Endgame not even beating Avatar worldwide without inflation (currency exchange rates aren’t going to be that drastic with a decade population and financial growth).
Where did you get your numbers from? Endgame won’t beat Avatar at all without inflation worldwide. In the US it doesn’t beat Avatar with inflation adjusted. Then you have Titanic that just completely destroys Endgame after inflation in the US. Probably worldwide too. Though that’s harder to say and there wasn’t really China back then. Along with China being much smaller for Avatar too.
Look at admissions over time. I only have UK numbers to hand [1] but despite an increasing population, we're still at barely a tenth of our 1950 numbers. MPAA stats [2] seem to show the US in decline over the last few years but I cant find a nice table to do an 84y comparison.
So again, cinema might be taking absolutely more money than ever before, but that's probably through higher ticket sales. Numbers of bums on seats is not breaking any records.
1: https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/u...
2: PDF!! https://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatri... (there are other reports for other single years but they're hard to grok out the attendance numbers).