‘Avatar’ is the All-Time Highest-Grossing Movie in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 19, 1:00PM EST

There are two ways of tracking the financial success of a movie. The first is to compare what a movie cost to make with its ticket sales based on the value of the dollar the year it was released. The other is to use inflation-adjusted numbers, which allows comparison between a movie made in 1939, for example, with one made today.

To determine the world’s highest-grossing movie of all time, 24/7 used the latter calculation. “Avatar” (2009) had inflation-adjusted ticket sales of $3.55 billion. (Without the adjustment, sales would be $2.8 billion, still very impressive)

“Avatar” is an unlikely candidate to be the highest grossing film. Written, directed, and produced by James Cameron, the science fiction movie takes place on a distant moon called Pandora in the middle of the 22nd Century. The movie stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. (These are the best sci-fi movies of all time.)

There is a chance that the first of several planned sequels could make even more money than the first. Currently, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” released Dec. 14 of last year, has grossed just over $2 billion.

Here’s a list of the highest-grossing movies of all time.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.