We know what films have made the most money, but it’s harder to be 100% sure of which films are actually seen by the most people, thanks to varying ticket prices by country (and even within countries, by region or class) since box office reporting doesn’t count actual admissions.

Films that generally get talked about as most widely seen (I’m talking the last decade or so) are Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar types, but the conversation should probably also include films that do well in India (like Baahubali 2), China (Wolf Warrior 2), or both (Dangal)

Baahubali 2, for instance, made ₹1,430 crore domestically (14.3 billion rupees) or about $200 million, which doesn’t sound like much on paper compared to the US haul of, say, Endgame ($850 million) but is actually pretty substantial

See, that $850 million figure is racked up by an average ticket price of about $9, so that’s somewhere in the vicinity of 95 million admissions

(it’s probably less, because you get to that average thanks to big cities which charge $15-25 a ticket, but let’s say it’s 95 million)

In comparison, that $200 million for Baahubali is at an average ticket price of about $1.5, which gets you well over 130 million admissions.

Wolf Warrior 2 grossed about ¥5.7 billion ($800 million) which, at an average ticket price of about $6, is a similar figure

Of course, this is just to highlight the flaw in box office reporting when it comes to cultural discussion. Eventually, something like Endgame may very well have been seen by the most people — but in part because of its success in India and China. $ figures might not reflect that

That element of cultural discussion — “who the audience is made of?” — is skewed by box office. Yeah, Endgame made $850 million in the US, but it made about $600 million in China and $60 million in India, which totals about 100 million & 90 million admissions in China & India

So the audience for these films is just as Indian and just as Chinese as it is American, which doesn’t seem to come up enough, nor does a film like Dangal, which was grossed $76 million in India, $180 million in China and an additional $50 million elsewhere

India and China alone, that’s another 100 million pairs of eyes on a movie, though I get the sense that most folks in the west might not have heard of Dangal (or other massive Indian films like PK, which also did well in China, or Chinese mega-hits like Ne Zha)

Long-winded way of saying the way we talk about the culture of cinema, globally, is too attached to box office, too skewed towards the west. There’s much more happening out there. Not just India/China. The whole world watches movies, and we rarely ask what they’re watching or why