Boxoffice is arguably more straightforward to report than TV ratings. You have this weekly Top 10 list of returns, you compare each movie to the other movies. TV ratings are a murky swamp where one network's hit is another network's flop and context is not just a factor, but often the entire story.

Yet one respect in which boxoffice reporting is pretty odd -- emphasizing 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 everybody reporting how Avatar is The Biggest Movie of All Time based on grosses ($1.859 billion and counting), it's important to remember how rising ticket prices skew the returns.

Here's 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. E.T.: 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 I (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...

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/avatar-ticket-sales-.html

what a brilliant idea.

Love it.

Some of those have been re-released several times which adds to the ticket sales.

But, of course, it also adds to their box office.