its been the case for at least the past 5 years. the last thing people ever talked about in movies was avatar 10 years ago.
The highest grossing can be achieved with good timing , a huge marketing campaign and an all-star cast/director.
To really gather a sense of how much a movie influences the popular culture a better metric is people coming back to it to re-watch it.
So Repeat ticket sales (same person going to theatre multiple times) + DVD/BluRay sales + cable programming + TV + SVOD + piracy