Talk:1982 in film

RfC: Should the annual top ten box-office charts list "all-time" totals or "release year" totals

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

There have been disputes on several articles changing the grosses in charts to the all-time grosses (thus incorporating reissue grosses). For example, on its original 1982 release E.T grossed $359 million, but that rose to $435 million thanks to two re-releases in 1988 and 2002. The question here is which figure should ideally go in this chart? Option 1: $359 million from the 1982 release; or option 2: $435 million collated from the 1982, 1988 and 2002 releases? This question doesn't just relate to this article but the whole family of year articles. Betty Logan (talk) 18:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Survey
Option 1: I favor going with the original release gross for ideological and pragmatic reasons. The ideological reason is that the purpose of the chart is to compare the performance of films released in a particular year. When you include grosses from reissues that skews the comparison. For example, the older Disney films have enjoyed many re-releases down the years, so to compare the lifetime gross for Snow White (which spans many years) to 1937 grosses makes very little sense (especially when you don't account for the effects of inflation). If a reader wants to know the lifetime total for Snow White (or E.T. for that matter) then that information is available at the article about the film. It doesn't really make sense to me taking earnings from the 1988 and 2002 releases and adding them to the earning for the 1982 release when the article is supposedly about 1982. The pragmatic reason for opting for original release totals is that they are simply far more verifiable. For example, the 1982 chart at Box Office Mojo charts films by their 1982 release totals, ignoring revenue from reissues. For 1982 we can just source the Box Office Mojo chart, but if we wanted it to include reissue grosses then we would need to effectviely construct the chart ourselves and source each film individually. The further back you go the more difficult information becomes to obtain. For example, if you go back to 1950 then pretty much the only source available for box office information is Variety (magazine) which invariably compiled a list of the year's top films and that was that i.e. the annual charts were not retrospectively updated to accommodate any re-releases. In some cases re-release information may be available for MGM films up to the early 1960s (through the Eddie Mannix ledger) and Warner films (through the William Schaefer ledger) and the Disney films are very well documented, but comprehensive all-time totals are patchy. By sticking with initial runs (and ignoring reissues) we can simply use the Variety top tens (up to the 1970s) which provide a comprehensive and consistent chart for every year. Betty Logan (talk) 18:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Option 1: For both the ideological and practical reasons offerd by Betty Logan. Pincrete (talk) 22:52, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Option 1 makes sense to me, but what is the opposing argument? Are we currently doing it the other way and that's the issue? Elinruby (talk) 14:07, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * There is currently a mix across the articles and ideally they need a standardized approach. Betty Logan (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Option 1 makes sense to me, too, for the reasons Betty Logan cites. When films (and other media) are re-released in various formats/editions, the all-time gross will change. Release year offers a single number; you can adjust it for inflation or compare it to other films the same year without too much trouble. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 12:05, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.