Blockbuster (entertainment)


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This article refers to the theatrical slang term; for other uses see Blockbuster (disambiguation).

Blockbuster, as applied to film or theater, denotes a very popular and/or successful production. The term was originally derived from theater slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry.

Contents

Origin of the term

The etymology of the term is uncertain; some histories cite it as originally referring to a play that is so successful that competing theaters on the block are "busted" and driven out of business; others claim a derivation from the nickname of a type of World War II-era bomb capable of destroying an entire city block. Still others note that the term may stem from crowds of people that might flock to line up for a hit play, perhaps stretching over several city blocks. Whatever its origin, the term quickly caught on as a way to describe a hit, and has subsequently been applied to productions other than plays and films, including novels and multi million selling computer/console game titles.

In film, a number of terms were used to describe a hit. In the 1970s these included: spectacular (The Wall Street Journal), super-grosser (New York Times), and super-blockbuster (Variety). In 1975 the usage of 'blockbuster' for films coalesced around Steven Spielberg's Jaws, and became perceived as something new: a cultural phenomenon, a fast-paced exciting entertainment, almost a genre. Audiences interacted with such films, talked about them afterwards, and went back to see them again just for the thrill.[1]

Blockbuster films

Before Jaws set box office records in the summer of 1975, successful films such as Gone With the Wind and Ben-Hur were called blockbusters based purely on their box office, but Jaws is regarded as the first film of the so-called 'blockbuster era' with its current meaning, implying a type of film. It also consolidated the 'summer blockbuster' trend, through which studios and distributors planned their entire annual marketing strategy around a big release by July 4.[2]

Jaws was the first film to exceed $100,000,000 in ticket sales and for a time this was the point at which a film could be designated a blockbuster in North America.[3] However earlier films such as Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Sound of Music (1965) easily passed this threshold.[4]

After the success of Jaws, many Hollywood producers attempted to create similar "event films" with wide commercial appeal. Film companies began green lighting increasingly high budgeted films and relying extensively on massive advertising blitzes leading up to their theatrical release. Spielberg and director/producer George Lucas (whose 1977 film Star Wars was the most successful film of that decade) are the filmmakers most closely associated with the beginning of the blockbuster era.

Although 'blockbusters' were initially created by the audience, after a while the term came to mean a high-budget production aimed at mass markets, with associated merchandising, on which the financial fortunes of film studio or distributor depended. It was defined by its production budget and marketing effort rather than its success and popularity, and was essentially a tag which a film's marketing gave itself. In this way it became possible to refer to films such as Hollywood's Godzilla (1998) or Last Action Hero as both a blockbuster and a box office disaster.[5]

Eventually, the focus on creating blockbusters grew so intense that a backlash occurred, with critics and some film-makers decrying the prevalence of a "blockbuster mentality" and lamenting the death of the author-driven, 'more artistic' small-scale films of the New Hollywood era. This view is taken, for example, by film journalist Peter Biskind, who wrote that all studios wanted was another Jaws, and as production costs rose, they were less willing to take risks and therefore based blockbusters on the 'lowest common denominators' of the mass market.[6] An opposing view is taken by film critic Tom Shone, who considers that Lucas and Spielberg's reinvention of blockbusters as fast-paced entertainment reinvogorated the US film industry and deserves greater artistic and critical recognition.[7]

Low-budget hits

When a film made on a low budget is particularly successful or exceeds the expectations of films in its genre, then those films might be considered by some as blockbusters as well, in the original meaning of the word. However, the Hollywood film industry generally does not consider them blockbusters and instead just calls them 'hits' or 'sleepers'. Examples include El Mariachi (produced on a budget of about $7,000), Fried Green Tomatoes (made at a budget of about $13,000,000, and earner of about $80,000,000 at the box office), The Rugrats Movie (the first non-Disney animated feature to gross over $100,000,000), The Blair Witch Project (amateur-produced first-person narrative film); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (non-English language foreign film); Fahrenheit 9/11 (political documentary film); Rocky; and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (satirical documentary); all of which have made over $100 million each.

See also

External links

Look up blockbuster in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ^ Tom Shone: Blockbuster (2004). London, Simon & Shuster UK. ISBN 0-7432-6838-5. See pp 27–40.
  2. ^ Shone (2004), Chapter 1.
  3. ^ Boxofficemojo.com: Jaws
  4. ^ Boxofficemojo.com: All Time Box Office (adjusted for inflation)
  5. ^ Shone (2004), page 28.
  6. ^ Peter Biskind: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Simon and Schuster, 1998.
  7. ^ Shone (2004). See for example page 34.






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