Was You Only Live Twice the first summer action blockbuster?

Cafe Society
1

You Only Live Twice, hot on the heels of Thunderball (which was until recently the highest grossing film of the series, and which grossed over 1 billion worldwide adjusted for inflation) was released in mid June 1967.

It made $300 million in America alone (adjusted for inflation), with an (adjusted) worldwide gross of over 700 million bucks.

Given it’s blockbuster success, especially for the mid 1960s, and the fact that it was a pure action film which received a wide summer release, could it be considered the first - one of the first - summer blockbusters?

2

I always have read jaws is considered the the first and then star wars the second or third after

3

Jaws was in a different ballpark. It opened in more theaters than any movie before it.

4

Yes, Jaws is usually given pride of place in Hollywood history for that.

5

No, it was Rio, by Duran Duran.

6

Did you just step off a treadmill somewhere?

7

So are the film’s criteria:

  1. Released in the summer (May 1 to September 1?)
  2. Action-themed.
  3. Blockbuster (which I assume to mean expected to make serious money).

If so, looking down the list of top-grossing films by year, adjusted for inflation…

1924 - The Sea Hawk (it’s got pirates, so I’m assuming some action)
1927 - Wings
1940 - Boom Town

Other promising entries like 1933’s King Kong failed for not being summer releases. As for 1967 itself, You Only Live Twice was beaten for U.S. sales by another summer action (arguably) movie, Bonnie and Clyde, though YOLT did better internationally.

Maybe YOLT is the first example of a summer action blockbuster for the overseas market.

8

Bonnie and Clyde performed sluggishly during it’s initial release during the late summer of 1967. Most of its box office sales came in early 1968 when it was rereleased in response to cleaning up in the Oscar nominations.

Of course, as Elendil’s Heir stated earlier, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about what were the big summer action blockbusters before **Jaws **in 1975. It is true that some big movies were set aside for the holiday season but, beyond that, Hollywood wasn’t so seasonably oriented as it is now. Summer, in fact, was often considered a dumping ground because the conventional wisdom was people went on vacations, attended ballgames, and did outdoor things during that time. Also, the practice of opening a movie at once on thousands of screens across the US was hardly ever done before the 70s. A film opened in New York and/or a few other big cities and gradually moved across the the US over the next several months. Thus, depending upon where you lived, a summer release may not get to your town until it was almost Thanksgiving.

9

Fair enough. I recall that this was the revenue stream for Bonnie and Clyde (Kirk Douglas mentions B&C in his memoirs as performing comparably to - I think - his own 1962 film Lonely are the Brave, in that a small opening was better, with time to build word-of-mouth) but hadn’t realized much of the earnings were after such a significant delay.