Avatar's real placement ...

[Kam]

i'm not a statistician, but this is not comparing apples to apples, correct? and they shouldn't be adjusting for inflation backwards right? not how much would Avatar make with 1939 ticket prices, but how much would Gone with the Wind make with 2010 ticket prices? Or they can't because they never collected that data in terms of seats, which brings me to my next point.

Wouldn't the real comparison of how well a movie is compared to movies of the past is Total # of tickets sold? How many people did X movie get in the seats compared to Y movie?

Regardless, the whole "Gone with the wind" is still #1 today argument doesn't hold a whole lotta water with me in the same way anyone arguing that the Oklahoma teams of the 40-50s domination is comparable to a team dominating today. WAAAAY too many other variables going into both discussions to make those comparisons.

What was the competition for Gone With The Wind? Not to take anything away from it, but they didn't have to deal with a media saturation of tv, home theaters, xbox, wii, internet, short attentions spans, add, adhd, hdaddhdddadd and everything else that films now are competing with.

Just sayin'... not that i want to give false praise to anything either, but i'd rather just celebrate a fantastic phenomenon of a movie rather than drag it down. In any case, two movies that have made 1.8 billion dollars are pretty fantastic.

EDIT: Ok so i just noticed they are collecting Gone with Wind at 2010 ticket prices. does it matter that those tickets have been collected over multiple re-releases, in terms of adjustment for inflation? do you just do a blanket adjustment?
e.g. 1939 - only 100mill
all rereleases 60s, 70s, 90s - the other 100mill.
do you just lump both together to adjust for inflation and you get the same number? or no?
(Im obviously very math handicapped, unless the numbers are 4 8 15 16 23 42)

EDIT#2: Doh! OK i stand corrected on that point, they do take into account the multiple releases and change the calculations based on that.http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm

(BUT... i still don't think Gone with the Wind would make 1.5bill if it was released for the First time in 2010.)