cinema history - Annual revenue for film industry by year adjusted for inflation

Have a theory about my question about the reasoning behind the average length of feature length films, but that theory is based on finding the annual revenue for film industry by year adjusted for inflation.

Do such numbers exist?

Answer

Hmm, there seems to be plenty of sources for total gross per year but none are adjusted for inflation.

Nonetheless, Box Office Mojo have a little explanation detailing how to adjust total gross using annual average ticket prices here. It also has a table of averages stretching back to the early 20th century. The data gets more intermittent the further back you go, but you could probably get sensible numbers from interpolation.

Essentially it boils down to dividing the gross by the ticket price of that year and multiplying by the ticket price of the year you are adjusting to. For example we can do this with BOM's table for yearly domestic gross found here to give

Year    Total (M)  2012-Adjusted (M)
2012    $3,859.80   $3,859.80
2011    $10,174.10  $10,161.27
2010    $10,565.50  $10,605.67
2009    $10,595.50  $11,188.85
2008    $9,630.70   $10,623.28
2007    $9,663.70   $11,124.49
2006    $9,209.50   $11,135.76
2005    $8,840.50   $10,923.05
2004    $9,380.50   $11,963.54
2003    $9,239.70   $12,135.73
2002    $9,155.00   $12,479.79
2001    $8,412.50   $11,771.55
2000    $7,661.00   $11,256.98
1999    $7,448.00   $11,611.84
1998    $6,949.00   $11,734.77
1997    $6,365.90   $10,984.30
1996    $5,911.50   $10,592.55
1995    $5,493.50   $10,001.96
1994    $5,396.20   $10,224.38
1993    $5,154.20   $9,860.21
1992    $4,871.00   $9,295.98
1991    $4,803.20   $9,035.95
1990    $5,021.80   $9,402.52
1989    $5,033.40   $10,041.44
1988    $4,458.40   $8,591.37
1987    $4,252.90   $8,614.57
1986    $3,778.00   $8,065.16
1985    $3,749.20   $8,364.41
1984    $4,031.00   $9,501.64
1983    $3,766.00   $9,468.80
1982    $3,453.00   $9,301.96
1981    $2,966.00   $8,449.90
1980    $2,749.00   $8,093.71

Which seems pretty reasonable. 2002 was such a strong year because it had Spider-Man, a LotR, a Star Wars, and a Harry Potter.

Unfortunately this data only goes back to 1980 so you will have to find another source if you're interested in before then. Also note that the table above is only for the U.S. domestic market; I'm not sure if that's what you want or if you're after worldwide figures.