The 'Real' Top Ten Movies

Gone with the Wind: the real number one movie of all time.

This past summer Hollywood and the media has been reporting how successful this summer has been at the box office. Spiderman, Star Wars: Episode II Attack Of The Clones, Scooby Doo, Men In Black II, Austin Powers In Gold Member and many other movies will all exceed the $100 million dollar mark this year at the box office. Spiderman opened with the biggest weekend in history. Star Wars II had the biggest Thursday opening ever.

In the past year several movies have moved into the top ten all time money making movies. Spiderman is in 5th place with $404 million. Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone is in 8th place with $318 million. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings is in 9th place with $313 million. However, the number one film of all time is Titanic with a staggering $601 million.

These are all very impressive numbers. Do these number actually mean that these are the most popular films in history? Not by a long shot. In the 1930's Gone With The Wind was a film phenomenon. Time magazine had Vivien Leigh on its cover as the search for the actress to play Scarlett was that big of news. Rival movie studio 20th Century Fox made a film called Second Fiddle, which mocked the making of Gone With The Wind. It was the first event film ever made. It was so popular that it was re-released at the theatres several times over the years. It's total box office take is $199 million. If the ticket prices were adjusted to match inflation Gone With The Wind would have made over $1 billion dollars.

Inflation of ticket prices is causing all of these new films to appear to be breaking records. When Gone With The Wind first came out in 1939 the average ticket price was 23 cents. The Sum Of All Fears had the biggest opening weekend of any of the Jack Ryan movies. From my recollection it faded fairly fast from the box office. If we took inflation into consideration, do you think more people went to see it than did Hunt For Red October or Patriots Games? Not when you consider that ticket prices have gone up 20% in the past 5 years.

Below is the top ten films of all time if you take into consideration ticket price inflation according to boxofficemojo.com.