Answer & explanation
The official answer, with Fermi’s reasoning step by step.
Answer & explanation
Official answer
33,500,000,000
dollars
How to estimate it
Fermi’s official “Napkin math”
Start with the US, about 330 million people. Each sees maybe 3 movies a year at $10 a ticket, about $10 billion in all. How big a slice of the world is that? China, Europe and Japan go to the movies too, so call it a quarter.
- US population
- 330,000,000
- 3 movies a year at $10
- ≈ $10,000,000,000
- US is about a quarter of the world
- × 4
- $10B × 4
- ≈ $40,000,000,000
Rounded assumptions may give a slightly different estimate. The official answer above is the game’s reference value.
Source calculation & reference
- US and Canada (Comscore)
- $8.87 billion
- China
- + $7.4 billion
- Rest of the world
- + $17.3 billion
- ≈
- $33,500,000,000
Reference cited by Fermi: Gower Street Analytics, 2025 global box office year-end estimate
How close was your guess?
Your comparison will appear here.
Compare by ratio: divide the larger number by the smaller one. The closer to 1×, the better.