The Godfather, Jaws and Star wars were all huge blockbusters in the 1970s and 80s and were the first summer blockbusters all in different genres. Each of these films had very high cinema attendances and box office rates, all for their own reasons, they each brought something new to the film industry, The Godfather being known as the best film of all time for the in depth story line and hard man violence, Jaws for the special effects and the fact it was the first summer blockbuster and Star wars for the brand new visual effects, it was the first of it's genre and it was completely new. These reasons made these films in particular make cinema attendance and box office earnings rise significantly.
In the time of 1975-1980s cinema attendance was declining because of the recession that the UK were in, to get cinema attendance numbers up the film industry began trying to build franchises, with a huge fan base and extra products to intrigue viewers attendance numbers were bound to rise, selling Godfather figurines, Star wars comics and lunchboxes and ET Tshirts etc. Unfortunately, they did not and numbers continued to decline. More households now had TVs and VCRs, this meant that it was cheaper for families to buy a video and watch it on their TVs with their friends instead of going to the cinema, this way they could also watch the video over and over again too. VCRs became a fashion trend and an event in the home. But also in this time video piracy was at an all time high, even more reason for the public not to go to the cinema, when they can wait to get a copy they can play over and over for less than half the price. In 1982 ET was announced the highest pirated film ever, in 1985 it was recorded as a new low of cinema attendance falling to just 54 million, the film industry realised that the blockbusters and franchises were not bringing in the viewers they needed and came up with the idea of multiplexes. A multiplex's where there are many films playing many different showrooms with bigger screens, comfier seats, louder sound systems and food and drink on sale in the lobby. The multiplexes are usually set in huge shopping centres, near restaurants, shops and sometimes even arcades and gyms. This made it particularly clear that the film industry were aiming their films at teenagers by showing them in and making these multiplexes as teenagers are known to hang around in these environments. Teenagers were also the only ones that had this disposable income at the time to spend at these multiplexes, teens wanted to see these big spectacle event films and multiplexes were the best place to see them, with these new conditions to watch in it was an entirely new viewing experience that was highly appealing. Although, the fact there was so much else to do in the same place as seeing the film, it had taken and still takes the focus away from the film.
Multiplex's were the best places to show films like star wars and George Lucas and Steven Spielberg knew this, thats why the film industry decided to build these multiplexes, they built them to show their own films because either way they knew they would make their money back. Their target audience were teenagers and teenagers liked spectacle films with special effects and star wars had all of that, watching it in a multiplex cinema made the experience a million times better and word got out about this, therefore cinema attendance rose by millions at a time especially as the UK were beginning to come out of the recession.
Film industries and production companies create a 'hype' in order to sell the film, they do this by lots of advertising and media attention through posters, trailers and anything that they can put in the news. For example, they built a hype for Jaws through advertising that it had brand new special effects (being the shark) and that it had had over $40 million spent on the making of it. It was also shown and put into the fleepit cinemas in the summer and it was the first summer blockbuster made, it had alot of hype and this is why even in the time that it was shown and released it made a lot of money. Hype works very well to entice their target audience, teenagers buy into the hype and the franchise raising cinema attendance and the box office numbers.
The box office numbers of The Godfather, Jaws, Star Trek and ET show the increase and fall. With The Godfather grossing worldwide $268,500,000, this isn't much at all compared to the $470,700,000 Jaws had grossed worldwide, this is because Jaws had much more hype than The Godfather did, Jaws was also aimed at teenagers and had special effects that were brand new, much more visually intriguing than a film like The Godfather. Star wars almost grossed double what Jaws had, grossing worldwide $797,900,000! This is because it was even newer and even more intriguing than Jaws was, being a brand new genre of film, with more outgoing visual effects and different storyline, it was a film absolutely everyone wanted to see. We then see a significant drop in box office sales in ET, with a worldwide gross of only $359,197,037, this is mainly because it was pirate copied so much, cinema attendance was extremely low and Sci-fi wasn't such a surprising genre, since Star wars, a lot of film industries were trying to make science fiction films that they were way more common now, but it was still appealing as a film it was just easier and a lot cheaper to get a pirate copy on video and be able to watch it over and over again with friends and family than to have gone to the cinema.
To conclude, the 4 blockbusters previously discussed are prime examples of showing the rise and fall of cinema attendance and box office numbers and how other factors contributed to rise and fall of these statistics from the recession to the increasing use of piracy.
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