There was no such thing as a “Summer Blockbuster” before the movie Jaws. And that’s a fact.
It was still first-run in the theater a year after opening. It took almost 5 years to be broadcast on television.
It also ushered in the era of mega-merchandising. Jaws t-shirts outsold any previous movie or television title 10-fold.
Of the three main stars, only Richard Dreyfus is still alive.
At 14, Jaws scared me so bad, I had nightmares for 3 weeks. Living on the Gulf coast, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t go to the beach in 1975. I still went back and saw it 6 more times in the theater.
“There was no such thing as a “Summer Blockbuster” before the movie Jaws.”
Yes, that’s true. And they just stumbled into it! You would think they might have thought of it before, esp. back in those days we went to the movies A LOT in the summer, for the air conditioning!
It’s a good lesson in the market’s “invisible hand”.