Anthony Russo and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Endgame (2019) has surpassed James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) as the top-grossing film of all time, according to CNBC. However, Hollywood doesn’t adjust box office records for inflation due to a number of variables, such as the new forms of entertainment accessible to modern audiences, evolving movie content, and the dozens of inflation rates across global markets. But Comscore, a media analytics company, divided the average ticket price the year a picture was released into its gross to estimate the number of tickets sold (still not an exact science, since averages are imperfect data), and ranked the top ten grossers as follows, from lowest to highest: David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Pierce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937); William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973); David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965); Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975); Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956); James Cameron’s Titanic (1997); Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982); Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music (1965); George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977); and Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939).
Hunter Goddard 