[neverending]

Originally Posted by The Villain

I thought being a blockbuster was about how much money a movie makes, not about how iconic it becomes.

Not so much.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbu...tertainment%29

In film, a number of terms were used to describe a hit. In the 1970s these included: "spectacular" (The Wall Street Journal), "super-grosser" (New York Times), and "super-blockbuster" (Variety). In 1975 the usage of "blockbuster" for films coalesced around Steven Spielberg's Jaws and became perceived as something new: a cultural phenomenon, a fast-paced exciting entertainment, almost a genre. Audiences interacted with such films, talked about them afterwards, and went back to see them again just for the thrill.

Jaws exceeded $100,000,000 in ticket sales and for a time this was the point at which a film could be designated a blockbuster in North America.However earlier films such as Gone With the Wind (1939) and The Sound of Music (1965) easily passed this threshold.