Movies used to be a lot cheaper to make. Taxi Driver cost about $1.5 million back in 1976. Faster Pussycat Kill Kill was made for about $45,000.
Quick lesson. The old model was to open a major movie in a prestige theater [ie Radio City Music Hall] where it would run for as long as it was profitable. After that it would go to smaller houses, and eventually become a double bill. People waited on line for years to see ‘The Exorcist’ because it was only showing at a few places.
Jaws was the first summer blockbuster. The studio planned to open it up in a lot of theaters on the same day. The plan worked. About the same time, the VCR started becoming popular. Thise two things changed the way movies got distributed forever.
Studios didn’t own the streaming or broadcast TV channels then. Now they make more money by selling the property through channels they own and control.
![[UPDATE] "The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie" will reportedly be pulled from theaters this Wednesday](https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/8b5b628a-b8ed-4f51-9231-397caf2b3a24.jpeg){kind=link}
When Star Wars first came out it ran in the theaters for two years.
Gone With The Wind ran at one theater in Georgia until 1969.
Sure, but they didn’t pump out that many movies back then.
Movies used to be a lot cheaper to make. Taxi Driver cost about $1.5 million back in 1976. Faster Pussycat Kill Kill was made for about $45,000.
Quick lesson. The old model was to open a major movie in a prestige theater [ie Radio City Music Hall] where it would run for as long as it was profitable. After that it would go to smaller houses, and eventually become a double bill. People waited on line for years to see ‘The Exorcist’ because it was only showing at a few places.
Jaws was the first summer blockbuster. The studio planned to open it up in a lot of theaters on the same day. The plan worked. About the same time, the VCR started becoming popular. Thise two things changed the way movies got distributed forever.
Studios didn’t own the streaming or broadcast TV channels then. Now they make more money by selling the property through channels they own and control.
I wonder how many prints they wore out.
Good question.
I just imagine all of the theatrical prints ending up at that theater to die in their projectors.