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FaRmLaNd on 10 January 2010
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mrstickball said:
dtewi said:

It doesn't take inflation into account. Seriously, take it into account and those top 10 current day movies don't break the top 50 (I think).

EDIT: Whoops, I meant to say some of those don't break the top 50.

Here's adjusted for inflation list: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

Avatar is at #85 (but I'm unsure how accurate that is).

 

The problem is, that the market is much different than it was for Titanic, or Gone With The Wind. So its hard to just use inflation-adjusted numbers to show which movies were the best of all time, or not.

For example, GWTW didn't get a TV deal worth millions of dollars when it debuted. It didn't have the DVD coming out 6 months after its theater release. No piracy either. Titanic didn't have DVD either - it was in theaters for almost an entire year (whereas $100m-grosser Paranormal Activity was in theaters a whopping 3 months before the DVD released).

So as much as adjusting for tickets can be a barometer, actual revenue is just as useful, because any movie that makes it high on that list is going to have a lot more secondary income coming in.

Not only that. The assumption that gwtw would sell as many tickets now as it did then is a flawed one. Not only that, but calculating inflation adjusted grosses ww is far more difficult then it is in america. And thats not even taking into account the multiple times these films were released.