Spielberg is credited with inventing the blockbuster...but Gone With the Wind is still the best selling film of all time, right?
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Replying to @nberlat
The term Blockbuster was first used in 1943, and GWTW came in '39. I'd say it was hyperbole to suggest Spielberg invented it, and may have just meant he was very good at, or he revived big budget film making, or something.
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Replying to @obsidian_andy @nberlat
It's the business model of the "summer blockbuster", one big simultaneous wide release after building hype through TV advertising
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It's notable because the reason GwtW's record is so ridiculously high is that it's the "blockbuster" of a different kind of era Back in the day they would give GwtW a re-release every ten years, where it would top the box office each time as a "tradition"
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In its initial release in 1939 it was released as an advance-screening roadshow for like six months all over the country (charging double the normal ticket price at theaters) before its actual opening in wide release in 1940
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I mean, it's just a time period when TV didn't have nearly as much market penetration so people just went to the movie theater a lot more It was much easier to build the hype train by actually showing the movie in select theaters, and you could keep them coming back a lot easier
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Ironically GwtW running up the box-office gross score stopped in 1971, four years before Jaws created the new "summer blockbuster" model (that depended on "trans-media" coordination with TV advertising etc) GwtW's next "re-release" was finally being televised on NBC on 1976
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So you have to take these changing consumer habits into account when calculating how "popular" a movie objectively is, like no movie could possibly have a similar box office gross to GwtW today because buying tickets to movies has shrunk so much as a portion of spending generally
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(That said, the fact that Gone with the Wind got such huge TV ratings when it was first televised and also sold so many VHS copies means it probably is the most popular movie of all time even taking that into account Which sucks because it's so goddamn racist)
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