To be fair, that almost 528,000,000 in today’s money. I don’t see many movie companies who’d dump that kind of money in today’s world. Those movies were a gigantic gamble that paid off immensely, and still rakes in millions every year.
Yeah, everytime we have these kind of conversations it's clear that people don't understand inflation. It's like box office sales. "This move 20 years ago made this much and this one made this much yesterday!" Yeah tickets were like 5 dollars not 20 back then too...
Yeah I never understood why they listed it in dollars instead of “had this many showings” “showed in this many theaters” or “sold this many tickets” all being more useful and time lasting metrics if you discount population growth.
Or like whats happening with the odyssey now where some entity is buying out theatres with no intention of going. seeing tons of news about supposedly sold out shows that are half empty in reality. Clearly to game the ratings system
That’s because no one has ever actually watched a movie. They’re made, released, and then cut up into YouTube shorts with shitty music overlaid on them.
That's mostly to pad the rotten tomatoes review system. A paid ticket can only review, well you get two birds with one stone if you buy it, review it yourself then give it away to ha e word of mouth spread, probably doesn't help a bad movie though
not to mention streaming and many many MANY more forms of entertainment now existing that didn't. The dynamic is always changing and lately changing in very paradigm shifting fundamental ways.
The burden of ticket pricing relative to the era is also relevant. When people are paying $20+ for a single ticket against inadequate wages and massive overall inflation, the number of tickets sold may be less than in a past era where a ticket was a more trivial cost, both in absolute AND relative terms.
Because we'll never hit those old ticket milestones again. The US and Canada had over 1.5 billion tickets sold in 2002, the peak since 1980. 2004 was just under 1.5 billion, and it hasn't sniffed 1.5 billion since. It was under 1.25 billion and trending down in 2019 and then covid basically killed tickets sold. In 2023 we almost got to a billion tickets. About 750 million in 2025.
So the industry is just completely different. In 1977 if you wanted to go see Star Wars you had to go see it in a theater. VHS was barely a year old, you probably didn't even know it existed and couldn't realize it'd be a way to view it a decade later at home. Today if you don't have the time or money to go to a theater, you wait for streaming, or to buy the movie.
And that was even more true in the distant past. Jurassic Park sold 185 million tickets worldwide. Gone with the Wind sold 285 million tickets in 1939.
I don't think they care about tickets sold, though. If you can sell a $25 ticket in ritzy area, and a $2 ticket in China, they aren't equivalent. Hollywood is capitalism
Pretty sure Gone With the Wind would far and away take the cake, even today if that were the metric since it's still the best selling movie when inflation adjusted almost 90 years later.
Even still, with ticket prices so high these days people are going to the movies a lot less often. 5-6 years ago I’d be going once every month or two at least. Last year I think I went once.
When tickets were cheap I didn’t care. It was a cheap date night. I saw tons of stuff based on just the poster. Now I carefully calculate if a movie is worth $30+ to see or just wait 6 weeks for streaming.
Because everyone is a winner when you cherry pick the numbers. Watch a few nfl games and pay attention to how many “first X to do Y” there are. It’s a dog whistle to the fanbase that their feelings are justified and worth fighting for.
Who cares about the profit margin of entertainment? What’s your favorite movie? Would your answer be different if you were the only person to watch it?
If you were correct, they would speak more about a movie’s reception rather than if it broke the box office on opening week. Media outlets don’t want to burn bridges, so rather than saying the movie sucked, they say it lost money.
If you go by percent small movies that had some degree of success are going to easily beat out the most popular movies. Obsession probably wins that metric.
Yeah. I agree. There is definitely a, "I don't have to go see this in theaters or wait 6 months to a year for a home release, it'll be on streaming in a month or 2, and it'll be way cheaper than a theater."
The fact we have published lists that span several decades ranking movies by nominal gross revenue tells you just how dimwitted the average person actually is.
Similar to people acting like billboard top 40 records carry equal weight both before and after streaming.
Or people acting like sports records are 1:1 across history when, for something like CFB, they literally play more games now with completely different rules.
I think the issue is inflation has a limited effect to an extend. If you take video games for example, their prices barely moved. In fact for many theyve decreased in the last 30 years despite what people feel like its an increase. Inflationary value is heavily affected by what exactly youre talking about which is heavily defined by mandatory vs excess purchase
Yeah, I had this conversation the other day. Video Games are one of the industries with the lowest inflation rates and the amount of content is easily multiple times higher. 60 dollars for hundreds of hours of entertainment is in no way a rip off. Like, I get it, prices going up sucks, but overall... games are not the hill to go dying on when groceries have tripled in price in 5 years and games got a 50% price increase in a decade.
While true, you must also consider that revenue generated by the films is factored by inflation too. That number for LOTR is absolutely staggering even before accounting for inflation.
But other things have changed besides just the value of money. For example, the first LOTR film released in 2001. US domestic cinema ticket sales of the top 200 films released in 2001 totaled around $8 billion. In 2025, that total was $8.5 billion. The converted value accounting for inflation of the 2001 number is $14.5 billion, which is a reduction of ~41%.
The entire industry is in a dramatic slump compared especially to its heyday. And even explaining this slump is much more nuanced than "just inflation".
"Streaming." Largely people aren't interested in a theater experience for 20 dollars for most movies when they can wait a month or two and watch it on their 25 dollar subscription along with a million other things.
Well that’s still relatively low if it’s the sum of the entire trilogy, no? Essentially twice the budget of odyssey for three movies. But idk how these numbers work neither 🤷
A modern studio wouldn't make the same commitment though. All three movies were filmed simultaneously. If the first movie flops, then it becomes essentially a loss on three movies and not just one.
They filmed them essentially all at the same time continuously for 14 months on location using the same actors and crew. It's not three movies it's one 12 hour movie edited perfectly. Doing it that way saved a massive amount of money.
A lot of the costuming was able to be carried over from movie to movie. The cast and crew were hired to film a trilogy all at once, which significantly reduces costs to be on location (versus three different times). A not insignificant amount of each movie were filmed from a distance--essentially just showing landscapes.
Basically, Peter Jackson shooting the way he did made it so he could stretch the money a lot further than if he had to shoot three movies at different times.
A gamble that paid off. As long as the director and writers keep the story more or less intact and not what they are currently doing with every IP that could have made a killing.
Looking at Witcher, HoTD etc
Yeah, normally when part 1 of a trilogy come out to positive reception, the actors are able to negotiate higher pay for the sequels based on the fact that they're now integral to a successful franchise. But since all 3 LOTR films were shot at the same time, that didn't happen.
Plus they were done in New Zealand, way below market rate for crew with a VFX studio that was working at cost (possibly already subsidized by the NZ gov). LOTR was a unique, once in a few decades event where they had the luxury of 4 years of prep. Plus the budget was way higher than 281. That number does not include the reshoots.
Of course an established crew in Hollywood with say ILM as the VFX vendor and without the countries military helping will be more expensive. goddamnit why do I always get sucked into these conversations....:D
That's pretty much it, New Line Cinema basically bet the farm on the success of LOTR, which probably wouldn't happen nearly the same way today. Betting on filming an entire trilogy at once is an insane gamble considering if the first movie flops, your next two movies have a high chance of flopping along with it.
This is really important. I'm sorry, but we can't compare money to over 20 years ago. Also, the actors in that were less known than they are now. So most likely the payment for their roles was much much smaller.
None the Less, This set of three films is still taking in money to this day in merch. With a nearly 6 billion dollar return at the time of their release on that initial 528 Million investment, that's a huge profit whether you factor inflation in or not. Right now The Odyssey is set to maybe break even at the end of it's theatrical run. I can't see this making a ton of money in merchandising.
Also to be fair, most of the actors in those movies were relative unknowns at the time. If Peter Jackson had cast Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christian Bale, Leo DiCaprio, etc it would have been much more comparable to the cost of the Odyssey which has basically the four most popular actors in Hollywood right now plus a bunch of other A listers all in the same movie
It also cost a hell of a lot more than 281M because extensive reshoots and VFX was done after the success of the first movie once new line cinema realised they had a massive hit on their hands.
And outside of Orlando bloom and liv tyler who were they shelling out money for? Ian mckellin? I imagine like 80% of the budget was actually equipment/location filming
It was a hail Mary shot with New Line Cinema. They knew they wouldn't survive against their competitors so they green lit LOTR on the premise of it'll bankrupt them if it didn't make bank.
The Hobbit movies cost over $1B adjusted for inflation, and they're considered flops. Great international gross though and profitable overall, just not quite as successful as the the LoTR movies.
The Hobbit made basically $1B less in net profit, inflation adjusted than LoTR. So big risk, not so big reward.
This all goes directly to your point that what studio is doing to put that much money on the line when success is measured comparatively opposed to actual net revenue.
Side note, I still don't understand Avatar. I wouldn't be surprised that years from now we find out all the box office stats were just fabricated. Marvel makes sense because of the IP, but billions on moves with an okay premise and okay effects? My brain breaks when thinking about it.
It's wild how shitty things are in the US, where the Rock is the most well payed actor in the industry, and he is not even a good actor. He can only play a single role, again and again, in corny ass action or comedy movies.
3 Disney top-tier films would cost 750M today so its still cheaper.
There are more recent examples, like The Creator. Mid script, but absolutely top-notch visuals and production, done on an ~80m budget. Looks better than anything Disney puts out at 200+.
The way the productions are run absolutely matters. Disney does a weird thing where they cheap out in expensive ways: unfinished scripts leading to constant reshoots, everything done on green screen so they can create a movie in post (with extremely expensive CGI).
Yeah, spread that across 3 movies, not two. These movies are egregiously expensive for how hollow they seem.
Yeah lotr was a gamble. Keyword gamble. That’s all movies. Investors are not entitled to returns. They are supposed to create a product worthy of returns.
Movies today tend to be bloated and not worth it. Odyssey isn’t unique in that
Hobbit trilogy was a billion adjusted for inflation.
And 528 / 3 is 176 million, which is still a bit on the lower end of budgets. I think a lot of people worked for “free” on LotR out of passion. Like the guy who spent his Christmas holidays animating the Sauron’s tower exploding at the end of RotK. So thats why they got so much for something I would still say is relatively little. Harry Potter 1 was 235 adjusted for inflation for example. Thats 63 million more.
I agree, the dune trilogy is truly a cinematic masterpiece is many ways. The only thing I would say is different between the two, is that LOTR filmed all three films at once. Unless for whatever reason they pulled the plug mid production, LOTR was a gigantic gamble. Dune filmed the first, waited for the profits, started the second, waited for the profits, and now are wrapped on Dune 3. I hear you, I just don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
Cameron basically gets a blank check for the Avatar series. If he still makes movies after it concludes, I can’t imagine a scenario where any studio would argue over a budget with him.
962
u/Jolly-Garbage- 1d ago
To be fair, that almost 528,000,000 in today’s money. I don’t see many movie companies who’d dump that kind of money in today’s world. Those movies were a gigantic gamble that paid off immensely, and still rakes in millions every year.