Sci-fi has become one of the biggest genres in entertainment, and it’s thanks to some of the biggest landmark moments in film belonging to the genre. However, fans today may not understand that the theatrical model of yesteryear meant that movies had a much longer run in theaters, with a much longer runway to earn money at the box office. As such, movies had the potential to have an ebb-and-flow performance pattern at the box office, and today, 48 years ago, one of the most shocking box office resurgences of all time occurred.
Looking back now, the original Star Wars movie (A New Hope) seems like it was an unstoppable box office phenomenon, but this was not the case. It took time and word of mouth for Star Wars to get audiences piling into the theater, and that big switch started today, July 21, in 1978.
When Star Wars first hit theaters on May 25, 1977, it was only released in 32 locations, as few had faith in George Lucas’ indie sci-fi film, which had an infamously hard time even getting into theaters. By August, it was expanded to over a thousand theaters and began a run that lasted over a year, as more and more people either discovered the film for themselves or returned to see it multiple times. In any other case, that would be enough for a film to be considered a phenomenon, let alone a success, but Star Wars wasn’t done building up its legend yet.
On Friday, July 21, 1978 (fourteen months after Star Wars opened in theaters), the film got a massive new expansion, jumping from just 38 theaters to 1,744 theaters. That weekend, Star Wars generated $10.2 million at the box office, setting a new domestic record (compared to $1.5 million in its first opening weekend). During the entire run of the expanded release, Star Wars would earn an additional $43.8 million, for a total domestic gross of $265 million (or about $1.36 billion if adjusted to today’s numbers).
Star Wars would get more and more re-releases over the years (1979, 1981, 1982, 1997), which would push its domestic total up to around $775.4 million (or anywhere from $1 billion to $3 billion today, depending on rate of adjustment) with many milestones along the way, like being the first film to gross over $500 million at the box office. However, the one milestone that still stands out above others is the expansion and the massive box office returns that it brought.
Even after a year, Star Wars‘ fame (and George Lucas’ run as an independent filmmaker) was still just a cult phenomenon that mainstream audiences had yet to see. It’s also a case where a director whose vision had been rejected by the studio system made that same studio system come begging to show his film, to drum up their own business. And Star Wars did just that: it got people into theaters like never before, and carved the mold for everything that a summer blockbuster (and franchise-starter) should be.
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