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Popular Culture without... Jaws

Without Jaws proving just how much there was to be made in a wide Summer release the record set by The Godfather might have held for as long as that of Gone with the Wind, perhaps widespread marketing campaigns would not become the norm and films would still rely on word of mouth and critics to convince people to buy tickets, and perhaps wide releases across the globe would never become the norm and we would still see a staggered release into large cities and then trickle down into smaller markets.
I think simultaneous release might have been delayed, but it would have become the norm eventually, as technology reached the point where bootleg recording and distribution becomes an issue. At the same time, it's much easier to release a film the same day across the world now that it no longer involves shipping bulky reels. I remember when my father managed a movie hall in the 1980s, and every week he received the stacks of film reels by special delivery, which then had to be spliced together in the projection room. Now you just download the thing and call it a day.

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I think simultaneous release might have been delayed, but it would have become the norm eventually, as technology reached the point where bootleg recording and distribution becomes an issue. At the same time, it's much easier to release a film the same day across the world now that it no longer involves shipping bulky reels. I remember when my father managed a movie hall in the 1980s, and every week he received the stacks of film reels by special delivery, which then had to be spliced together in the projection room. Now you just download the thing and call it a day.

Of course that just begs the question which film is the 'lucky' one that happens to hit the right moment to become big because this technology's arrived.

The boring answer is 'Star Wars' of course.

More interestingly Airplane! was the 4th highest grossing film of 1980 as it was, and feels like the sort of film that might stumble across a sort of mixed 'word of mouth initially launching mass simultaneous release elsewhere' format.

Would that lead to comedies being viewed as the locked-in film success for a while?
 
Of course that just begs the question which film is the 'lucky' one that happens to hit the right moment to become big because this technology's arrived.
I'd say it would have to be after the point where VCRs have become a common household item, and video cameras are small enough that they can be easily smuggled into movie halls. So how about Ghostbusters?

Of course it's also possible that the trend may not start in the US, but in countries with a domestic moviemaking industry and loose copyright laws--India comes to mind.
 
I definitely agree that wide releases would likely still have come about, but I think it likely that it would still happen in the 1970s as opposed to based on the rise of home video. There were already a couple experiments in wide releases with the likes of Magnum Force and a few Bond films, but it's worth speculating which one might hit those dizzying Jaws heights and what this might mean for film.

Like @Alex Richards says, Star Wars is a bit of a boring choice in this, but what else was floating around in the late 1970s?

There's Smokey and the Bandit, the second highest grossing film in 1977 OTL after Star Wars, 1978 saw Grease and Superman as the top two grossing films OTL.

Would Smokey and the Bandit reaching Jaws like success see road movies and perhaps more broadly action comedies become the dominant blockbuster genre? Would Grease see big-budget musicals make a comeback and make the 1980s even more like the 1950s? Or would Superman see the comic book movie become the big thing two or three decades earlier?
 
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