Blockbuster (entertainment)

A blockbuster is a work of entertainment—typically used to

describe a feature film, but also other media—that is highly
popular and financially successful. The term has also come to refer
to any large-budget production intended for "blockbuster" status,
aimed at mass markets with associated merchandising, sometimes
on a scale that meant the financial fortunes of a film studio or a
distributor could depend on it.

Contents
Etymology
History Queue for Gone with the Wind in
Golden Age era Pensacola, Florida (1947)
Blockbuster era
1970s
1980s-1990s
21st century
Criticism
See also
References
External links

Etymology
The term began to appear in the American press in the early 1940s,[1] referring to aerial bombs capable of
destroying a whole block of buildings.[2] Its first known use in reference to films was in May 1943, when
advertisements in Variety and Motion Picture Herald described the RKO film, Bombardier, as "The block-
buster of all action-thrill-service shows!" Another trade advertisement in 1944 boasted that the war
documentary, With the Marines at Tarawa, "hits the heart like a two ton blockbuster." Several theories have
been put forward for the origin of the term in a film context. One explanation pertains to the practice of
"block booking" whereby a studio would sell a package of films to theaters, rather than permitting them to
select which films they wanted to exhibit. However, this practice was outlawed in 1948 before the term
became common parlance; while pre-1948 high-grossing big-budget spectacles may be retrospectively
labelled "blockbusters," this is not how they were known at the time. Another explanation is that trade
publications would often advertise the popularity of a film by including illustrations showing long queues
often extending around the block, but in reality the term was never used in this way. The term was actually
first coined by publicists who drew on readers' familiarity with the blockbuster bombs, drawing an analogy
with the bomb's huge impact. The trade press subsequently appropriated the term as short-hand for a film's
commercial potential. Throughout 1943 and 1944 the term was applied to films such as Bataan, No Time
for Love and Brazil.[3]
History

Golden Age era

The term fell out of usage in the aftermath of World War II but was revived in 1948 by Variety in an article
about big budget films. By the early 1950s the term had become standardised within the film industry and
the trade press to denote a film that was large in spectacle, scale and cost, that would go on to achieve a
high gross. In December 1950 the Daily Mirror predicted that Samson and Delilah would be "a box office
block buster", and in November 1951 Variety described Quo Vadis as "a b.o. blockbuster [...] right up there
with Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind for boxoffice performance [...] a super-spectacle in all its
meaning".[3]

Blockbuster era

1970s

In 1975, the usage of "blockbuster" for films coalesced around Steven Spielberg's Jaws. It was perceived
as a new cultural phenomenon: fast-paced, exciting entertainment, inspiring interest and conversation
beyond the theatre (which would later be called "buzz"), and repeated viewings.[4] The film is regarded as
the first film of the "blockbuster era", and founded the blockbuster film genre.[5] Two years later, Star Wars
expanded on the success of Jaws, setting box office records and enjoying a theatrical run that lasted more
than a year.[6] After the success of Jaws and Star Wars, many Hollywood producers attempted to create
similar "event" films with wide commercial appeal, and film companies began green-lighting increasingly
large-budget films, and relying extensively on massive advertising blitzes leading up to their theatrical
release. These two films were the prototypes for the "summer blockbuster" trend,[7] in which major film
studios and distributors planned their annual marketing strategy around a big release by July 4.[8]

1980s-1990s

The next fifteen years saw a number of high-quality blockbusters released including the likes of Alien
(1979) and its sequel, Aliens (1986), the first three Indiana Jones films (1981, 1984 and 1989), E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), the Back to the Future trilogy
(1985, 1989 and 1990), Top Gun (1986), Die Hard (1988), Batman (1989) and its sequel Batman Returns
(1992), and The Hunt for Red October (1990).[9]

21st century

Some examples of summer blockbusters from the 2000s include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the
Black Pearl (2003), The Da Vinci Code (2006), and Transformers (2007)—all of which founded
successful franchises—and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Pixar's Up (2009). The superhero genre
saw renewed interest with X-Men (2000), Spider-Man (2002), Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel The
Dark Knight (2008) all proving to be very popular.[10]

Blockbusters in the 2010s include Inception (2010), Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010), Ted (2012),
Despicable Me (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Wonder Woman (2017).
Snowpiercer (2014) proved to be the rare example of a blockbuster that did not perform well in the North
American market. Several established franchises continued to spawn successful entries with Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Spider-Man: Homecoming
(2017), Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) and Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2010) and Incredibles 2 (2018)
among the highlights. Several older franchises were successfully resurrected by Mad Max: Fury Road
(2015), Jurassic World (2015), Man of Steel (2013), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and its sequel
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). The most successful franchise of the decade was arguably Disney's
Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly The Avengers series.[11]

Criticism
Eventually, the focus on creating blockbusters grew so intense that a backlash occurred, with some critics
and film-makers decrying the prevalence of a "blockbuster mentality",[12][13] lamenting the death of the
author-driven, "more artistic" small-scale films of the New Hollywood era (despite criticism of the praise
the latter set of films received). [14][15] 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.[16]
In his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson talks about blockbuster films, stating that a society that is hit-
driven, and makes way and room for only those films that are expected to be a hit, is in fact a limited
society.[17]

See also
AAA (video game industry), equivalent term in the videogame industry
Box office
Box-office bomb
Classical Hollywood cinema
Four-quadrant movie
List of highest-grossing openings for films
List of highest-grossing films
Megamusical, equivalent term in the musical theatre industry
Oscar season
Sleeper hit

References
1. "Google Ngram Viewer" (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_en
d=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=blockbuster&direct_url=t
4;,blockbuster;,c0;,s0;;blockbuster;,c0;;Blockbuster;,c0;;BLOCKBUSTER;,c0).
books.google.com. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
2. "blockbuster | Definition of blockbuster in English by Oxford Dictionaries" (http://www.oxford
dictionaries.com/definition/english/blockbuster). Oxford Dictionaries | English. Retrieved
2018-01-09.
3. Hall, Sheldon (2014). "Pass the ammunition : a short etymology of "Blockbuster" " (http://shur
a.shu.ac.uk/6809/3/Hall_Etymology_of_Blockbuster_(rev).pdf) (PDF). Sheffield Hallam
University Research Archive. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
4. Tom Shone: Blockbuster (2004). London, Simon & Schuster UK. ISBN 0-7432-6838-5. See
pp. 27–40.
5. Neale, Steve. "Hollywood Blockbusters: Historical Dimensions." Ed. Julien Stinger.
Hollywood Blockbusters. London: Routeledge, 2003. pp. 48–50. Print.
 6. "Celebrating the Original STAR WARS on its 35th Anniversary" (http://cinematreasures.org/b
log/2012/5/25/celebrating-the-original-star-wars-on-its-35th-anniversary).
cinematreasures.org. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
7. Gray, Tim (2015-06-18). " 'Jaws' 40th Anniversary: How Steven Spielberg's Movie Created
the Summer Blockbuster" (https://variety.com/2015/film/news/jaws-40th-anniversary-at-40-bo
x-office-summer-blockbuster-1201521198/). Variety. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
8. Shone (2004), Chapter 1.
9. "Did 'Jaws' and 'Star Wars' Ruin Hollywood?" (https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/2
2/did-jaws-and-star-wars-ruin-hollywood/). Ross Douthat. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
10. "Summer Blockbusters That Defined the 2000s" (https://www.cbr.com/summer-blockbusters-
that-defined-the-2000s/). CBR. July 22, 2020.
11. "Our 25 Favourite Blockbusters of the 2010s" (https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/07/our-25-f
avourite-summer-blockbusters-of-the-2010s/). Gizmodo Australia. July 13, 2020.
12. Stringer, Julian (June 15, 2003). Movie Blockbusters (https://books.google.com/books?id=e0
Kxuj2IcnoC&q=blockbuster+mentality&pg=PA108). Psychology Press. p. 108.
ISBN 9780415256087 – via Google Books.
13. Berman, Michael; Dalvi, Rohit (January 18, 2011). Heroes, Monsters and Values: Science
Fiction Films of the 1970s (https://books.google.com/books?id=iaEnBwAAQBAJ&q=blockbu
ster+mentality&pg=PR7). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443827768 – via
Google Books.
14. Dargis, Manohla (August 17, 2003). "The '70s: Get over it" (http://articles.latimes.com/2003/a
ug/17/entertainment/ca-dargis17). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
15. Dargis, Manohla (12 November 2010). " '60s Hollywood, the Rebels and the Studios: Power
Shifted (or Did It?)" (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/movies/14dargis.html). The New
York Times. Retrieved July 19, 2018.
16. Peter Biskind: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation
Saved Hollywood. Simon and Schuster, 1998.
17. Anderson, Chris. "The Long Tail" (http://www.longtail.com/bloggingheroes.pdf) (PDF). Chris
Anderson. Retrieved April 20, 2011.

External links
All Time Box Office Domestic Grosses (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm)
at Box Office Mojo

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