10 Top-Grossing Movies of All Time, Adjusted for Inflation (Photos)
“Avengers: Endgame” became the highest-grossing film of all time on July 21, when Disney announced that the movie had pulled in $2.79 billion at the global box office. The Marvel movie topped the record held by 2009’s “Avatar,” which made $2.7897 billion in a 234-day theatrical run after 87 days in theaters.
But the title of the highest-grossing film is a deceptive one — it doesn’t take into account the changing prices of movie theater tickets or the general effect of economic inflation. CNBC enlisted Comscore, a media analytics company, to calculate the top 10 highest-grossing films in the U.S. when ticket price changes and inflation are taken into account.
Because of the wide variations in inflation rates between currencies, Comscore analysts focused only on ticket sales in the United States, where “Endgame” made $854 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo. They found the average ticket price for the year a film was released and divided that into the film’s domestic gross to find the estimated number of tickets the film sold, then multiplied the estimated number of tickets by the average price of a ticket in 2019 ($9.01, according to CNBC). Comscore also included any times that the film was re-released in the adjusted domestic gross.
At an $854 million domestic gross, “Endgame” did not even crack the top 10 when adjusted for inflation. Neither did the current record-holder for domestic gross, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which pulled in $937 million after its 2015 release.
Here are the top 10 domestic earners, when adjusted for inflation:
10. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”
9. “The Exorcist”
8. “Doctor Zhivago”
7. “Jaws”
6. “The Ten Commandments”
5. “Titanic”
4. “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
3. “The Sound of Music”
2. “Star Wars”
1. “Gone with the Wind”
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