Yet one respect in which boxoffice reporting is pretty odd – is emphasising ticket grosses, yet rarely mentioning ticket sales. That would be like always reporting how many ad dollars sold off LOST and not mentioning the number of viewers that actually watched the show. With the whole world reporting how AVATAR is 'The Biggest Movie of All Time' based on box office grosses ($2 billion and counting), it is important to remember how rising ticket prices skew the returns.

So here are the Top 20 movies of all time ... by number of tickets sold:

1 GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) 202,044,600
2 STAR WARS (1977) 178,119,600
3 THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) 142,415,400
4 ET: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (1982) 141,854,300
5 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) 131,000,000
6 TITANIC (1997) 128,345,900
7 JAWS (1975) 128,078,800
8 DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) 124,135,500
9 THE EXORCIST (1973) 110,568,700
10 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937) 109,000,000
11 101 DALMATIANS (1961) 99,917,300
12 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) 98,180,600
13 BEN-HUR (1959) 98,000,000
14 RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) 94,059,400
15 THE STING (1973) 89,142,900
16 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) 88,141,900
17 JURASSIC PARK (1993) 86,205,800
18 THE GRADUATE (1967) 85,571,400
19 STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 (1999) 84,825,800
20 FANTASIA (1941) 83,043,500

AVATAR, despite topping the worldwide gross list, by and by, is only No. 26 on the ticket sales list with 76,421,000 sold ... at least, so far...

Original story at The Hollywood Reporter