Movies used to be a lot cheaper to make. Taxi Driver cost about $1.5 million back in 1976. Faster Pussycat Kill Kill was made for about $45,000.
Quick lesson. The old model was to open a major movie in a prestige theater [ie Radio City Music Hall] where it would run for as long as it was profitable. After that it would go to smaller houses, and eventually become a double bill. People waited on line for years to see ‘The Exorcist’ because it was only showing at a few places.
Jaws was the first summer blockbuster. The studio planned to open it up in a lot of theaters on the same day. The plan worked. About the same time, the VCR started becoming popular. Thise two things changed the way movies got distributed forever.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes they did, indeedy!
Take MGM during the heyday of the old studio system, it had almost 30 soundstages on the lot, always active or under construction and would be cranking films out constantly, and that doesn’t include location shooting around the wildly different environments near LA - deserts and chaparral, forests and mountains, etc.
Now add to that Warner, RKO (later renamed to Universal), Paramount, United Artists, etc.
Directors and stars were under contract for wages, would be in several films each and every year.
Now add to that all the lower budget studios cranking out cheap-o b-movies, mostly horror and noir.