There is no guarantee on what that end figure will be though, therefore option 1 is typically more attractive. But, yeah, this falls into "Taking everything else out of the equation."

Also if you ad in marketing, do you then factor in merchandising? SW would be the clear champ in that arena.

BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) is said to be the biggest grosser of all time, but B.O. records were spotty back then, so no one can prove it.

And I'm quite sure GONE WITH THE WIND attracted way more ticket buyers than any film on that list. It was a huge hit when it came out in 1939 and it was re-released to theaters on a regular basis for at least three decades afterwards (including when I first saw it), and even a few times after that, right up to its 50th anniversary re-release, courtesy of Turner, in 1989.

I remember the first five James Bond movies and the Leone Italian western trilogy coming back to theaters constantly when I was in Junior High, HS, and college. Nobody ever tallied up those rentals. I'm sure those films had way more ticket buyers from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s than anything on that list, esp. MY BIG FAT STUPID WEDDING. If you did a poll today, asking how many people have seen GOLDFINGER or THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY vs. how many have seen DUMB FAT WEDDING, I'm sure the older films would come out way ahead. I don't know anybody who's seen FAT GREEK, while I know hundreds who've seen the other films.

This whole notion of production cost relative to gross really says nothing about a film's impact or true audience size.

This list has made us all stupiderer.

The list is total BS. Avatar cost roughly $300 million to make and brought in 2.7 billion. Name one other movie that made 2.4 billion profit.

Well, like others have said, you're not counting marketing costs, whatever astronomical number went directly to Cameron and other costs like that, but yeah...Avatar made LOADS of money. It didn't have a 6000% ROI or anything, but like I said before, ROI is basically useless. The only number that counts is the bottom line and I'd be willing to bet that Avatar leads in that category as well.

alright calm down, sir.

No list can be perfect, but this list also fails to account for the earning potential of films outside of box office. Saturday Night Fever and Star Wars made more money off of their Soundtrack and toys than they did at the box office and they still earn that money to this day. Today Greek Wedding makes some $$$ off of TV sales and DVD and that's about it.

It also doesn't consider that well...of that $2.7M...only at most half even goes to the people paying the bills. So yeah...it'd be more like $1.35B, minus $300M production (of screw it, we all know it cost $400M)...plus another $150M in marketing.

But then...what about home video? What about TV sales?! Merchandise? Video games? That's another few hundred million plus. But do we have to then deduct other expenses? What about James Cameron's backend? Subtract $200M. What about residuals? Oh, subtract another $30M. What about other people's backend? Ok, that's probably tiny. But what about co-finance deals? I think I read there were some of that...subtract some payout for that...but then, you can subtract some from the expenses too. Do we consider studio overhead in this calculation? Studios certainly do. Take out another $50M, or something.

Oh who am I kidding, if you don't have the studio P&L in front of you determining which film was actually the most profitable is nearly impossible. Never mind inflation. Let's not even get started on merchandise...do we really count Knights of the Old Republic as Star Wars Episode IV money? That being said, I'm sure Avatar is a movie that made more than a billion in profit, and then some. Probably near the top of the list for sure. At the top? Well, hard to say but there aren't very many films that turn profits in the billions.

Then they would have had to adjust for inflation for individual countries in every international market the movies were released in. Not even box office mojo does that! But yeah, they should have left the budget alone if they didn't adjust the gross.

I have spoken with the accountancy firms of the major studios and they all assured me that every film on that list plus Avatar, GWTW and Birth of a Nation was a money loser. Sorry if you had any net points.

So I should cancel my Bugatti Veyron order then?

True. Somehow, the My Big Fat Greek Wedding action figures and Lego sets didn't take off.

IIRC, the magic number that Fox needed to break even on Avatar was close to $600 million worldwide (luckily for Fox, the distribution part was done on the cheap as most of it was digitally).

Funny how quickly MBFGW has slipped out of pop culture memory. I did a straw poll here at the office asking people who starred in that movie. The closest anybody got was guessing Kathy Najimy.

Me too and 1978 HALLOWEEN.

Exactly what I was thinking. If they insist on adjusting, then adjusting one but not the other makes this about as pointless as possible.

That sounds probably reasonable, though you're talking breakeven after all ancillary markets are counted (so after TV, home video, any merchandise), and it'd take years and years for them to get there.

And really, it'd still be really close.

Exactly what I thought of first as well. It grossed $193,298,009 on a $15,000 budget... if you go by ROI the way they calculate it, that's 1,288,653%, which annihilates everything on that list (MBFGW has only 6,150%).

Agreed. Methodology fail!