Monday, May 10, 2010

35 years of Summer Blockbusters - May 10th



May 10, 1996 - Fourteen years ago the studios reserved their big budget, special effects films for the third or fourth weekend in May. Warner Bros. had Twister scheduled for a May 17 opening, but that left them only 5 days, and one full weekend before the highly anticipated opening of Paramount's Mission:Impossible. In order to give their film some breathing room and the possibility of success at the box office they moved the opening up to May 10, the second weekend in May. When the film opened with a three day gross of $40 million and only lost 9% of it's audience by the following weekend they knew that big budget pictures could do well earlier in the month. Big openings on the second weekend in May became standard until 2000 when Gladiator demonstrated that the first weekend in May could also yield big returns.


May 10, 1975 - Thirty five years ago the film Monty python And The Holy Grail arrived from Great Britain. The United States was never the same. One of the funniest movies ever made!

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