CASINO ROYALE, reports the BBC, has become the highest-grossing James Bond movie ever. It has generated $454 million worldwide. The previous Bond winner was Die Another Day (Brosnan, Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist named Christmas) and before that, all of the other ones.

I read this and it got me thinking… how does that stack up to ALL movies? So I clicked over to Boxofficemojo.com, which helpfully provides a list of the top money earners of all time. And there it would be at #63 between MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and OCEAN’S ELEVEN, a couple of remakes. For further perspective, the movie to beat is TITANIC which worldwide took in $1,845,000,000. 1.8 billion dollars. I don’t blame James Cameron for staying out of directing for a while after that.

However, if you really like perspective, adjust for inflation. Note that this chart is domestic only. But if every ticket of every movie was sold at today’s prices, TITANIC comes in at #6. #1 is GONE WITH THE WIND, which like TITANIC is a love story told over the backdrop of difficult circumstances. Weirdly, #2 is STAR WARS.

Domestically CASINO ROYALE has pulled in $145 million. It’s between AMERICAN PIE 2 and 101 DALMATIONS (the original, animated one.) Interesting stuff, all this, but essentially meaningless. Still, keep these figures in mind, because you can amaze your friends. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Yes, yes it is.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 2:56 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.