AVATAR: #87 at the All-Time Domestic Box Office?

Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind (Selznick / MGM); Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington in Avatar (WETA / 20th Century Fox) (bottom)

James Cameron's Avatar, #87 at the domestic box office. It doesn't sound quite right, does it? But…

Adjusted for inflation, Avatar is at a modest #87 spot on Box Office Mojo's list of all-time highest grossers in the US/Canada, with an estimated $381.1m*. If higher 3D/IMAX ticket prices were factored in, Avatar would be even further down. Topping the list is multiple Oscar winner Gone with the Wind (1939), which starred Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard. Victor Fleming directed the mammoth David O. Selznick production. Gross: $1.485 billion.

The other top five films on Box Office Mojo's inflation-adjusted list are George Lucas' Star Wars (1977, $1.309b), Julie Andrews' The Sound of Music (1965, $1.046b), Steven Spielberg's ET (1982, $1.042b), and Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956, $962m). Cameron's Titanic (1997) comes in sixth place, with $943m.

Rounding out the top ten are Jaws (1975), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Exorcist (1973), and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Others ahead of Avatar include Ben-Hur (1959), The Godfather (1972), Ghostbusters (1984), Love Story (1970), American Graffiti (1974), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), My Fair Lady (1964), and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).

But hey, if things continue as they are Avatar will be #85 by tomorrow, ahead of Aladdin and Mrs. Doubtfire. It's just passed both Ghost (1980) and another Selznick production, Duel in the Sun (1946). If it adds another $50m this weekend, it may jump to #59 on Monday, ahead of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Admittedly, those types of statistics can be tricky if you don't have the actual number of tickets sold per film. Even so, they do provide a more reliable look at a film's popularity at the box office. On the other hand, the fact that television, personal computers, DVDs, and pay-per-view options weren't around back in 1939, when all-time winner Gone with the Wind came out, should be considered as well. (Note: Gone with the Wind made millions more in the late 1960s, in addition to other revivals as recent as the early 2000s.)

* Adjusted to an estimated 2010 average ticket price of $7.35.