Steven Spielberg’s 51 Year-Old Horror Masterpiece Changed Blockbusters Forever (And Time Is Running Out to Stream It) You Should Know
There are certain things that just go with summer: longer days, warmer weather, vacation, and of course, the blockbuster movie. It’s kind of a big deal when it comes to movies each year, those major releases meant to get people into the theater for action-packed spectacles that will simultaneously thrill and delight audiences and make massive amounts of money for the studio. It’s been this way for such a long time that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the summer blockbuster was always a thing, but that’s not actually the case. The idea of the big summer blockbuster actually got its start back in 1975 with one iconic movie and now, just as summer is starting to be behind us, the film as well as its sequels is about to fade from streaming as well.
Released in 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws changed everything. The thriller, based on Peter Benchley’s novel, told the terrifying tale of a great white shark unleashing horror on a small New England town. It’s widely considered horror, but it actually blended a lot of genres and never let up for its entire 124-minute runtime. The film brought in more than $100 million at the box office and broke records, becoming the first real summer blockbuster. The film would get three sequels — Jaws 2 in 1978, Jaws 3-D in 1983, and Jaws: The Revenge in 1987 — and while all four have been streaming on Peacock, they’ll be leaving the platform on September 30th, just in time for it to be fall once again.
Jaws Completely Changed the Film Industry
It is almost impossible to overstate how significant Jaws is to the film industry and a big part of that comes down to the film’s release. We already acknowledged that the film is the first real summer blockbuster for Hollywood, but how the movie got to that point is pretty revolutionary as well. Universal, the studio behind Jaws, spent a then-massive $1.8 million on the marketing for the movie, including a completely unprecedented $700,000 on national television spots. This big spend included a pretty intense round of 30-second ads that aired on prime-time network television for two nights leading up to the film’s release. That sort of marketing put the movie in the front of a lot of moviegoer minds, but it wasn’t the only interesting thing that was done to promote the film. There was a lot of merchandise created for Jaws as well. Jaws got releases of everything from t-shirts to a soundtrack album, to a book about how the movie was made, the book the movie was based on, toy sharks, posters, and so much more. There was even a Jaws game. There had been nothing like it before.
But after Jaws? Well, it is impossible it imagine a summer movie season without a blockbuster and blockbuster movie merch is also very much the norm. In fact, movie merch has evolved even further with the rise of popularity in themed popcorn buckets. Jaws even got in on that marketing trend 50 years after it completely changed Hollywood, too. The film was re-released in theaters for its big anniversary complete with a shark-themed bucket. Seems pretty perfect and fitting if you ask us.
Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Jaws: The Revenge are streaming on Peacock and will leave the platform on September 30th.
