delgadosaur wrote:

delgadosaur wrote:


This paragraph pretty much admits it is speculative.



Not speculative at all.  To speculate is to make surmises without evidence.  The word "figure" is used in the sense of employing the science of math.  Once you have the numbers it's pretty easy to figure them up.  But numbers are what Box Office Mojo and all the box office websites don't have on the majority of older movies.  Do you see anything on that list that represents a release prior to 1960?  As I said, if you'd care to re-read the post, those lists are biased against older films, especially the 1930s and 1940s.

Look at this Box Office Mojo list of All Time Box Office Domestic Grosses Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

There are some older films on the list but where is THE BIG PARADE (1925 -- $343.4 million), BEN-HUR (1925 -- $305.2 million), THIS IS THE ARMY (1943 -- $407.7 million), FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL (1943 -- $333.9 million), QUO VADIS (1951 -- $312.4 million), FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953 -- 326.4 million), and GIANT (1956 -- $322.2 million), not to mention the myriad other films from the 1920s forward that brought in the equivalent of $150 - 200 million or more?

Since these lists are far from complete they are inadmissible as evidence of a negative.  Put another way, exclusion from the list proves nothing.