Question

According to "All time box office rank", Avengers: Endgame in 2019 is the highest lifetime gross at $2.7 billion. FYI, the Box office is calculated with the number of ticket sales multiplied by the price of the ticket.

However, your grandfather said "No, that's not true, when I was young, everyone went to see Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, back in 1977. I am sure that Star Wars Episode IV probably sold more tickets than Avengers Endgames."

It turned out that your grandfather was right. Explain succinctly why.

Answer 1

The simple answer to this is inflation. the price of the tickets have risen so much that despite selling more tickets, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope's box office collection was less than Avengers: Endgame. Let us take an example:

Suppose Star wars sold 1000 tickets and the price in 1977 was 100 per ticket. Thus, collection = 1000*100 = 100000

Now, suppose Avengers sells lower number of tickets = 900 but prices have risen to 150 per ticket, box office = 900*150 = 135000, 35% higher than that of Star Wars.

Thus, grandfather is right when he talsk about the number of tciketd sold