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| photo courtesy of National Geographic |
“HEY, if you were a hotdog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?”
- Harry Caray
If your name is Steven Spielberg this week, the answer to the above conundrum would be a resounding “I guess so.”
With indoor theaters slowly reopening, and a renewed popularity of drive-ins, the lack of new films from a quarantined Hollywood means that ravenous movie-goers are being drawn back in with older releases.
In this case, the chum-in-the water for unfed film-fans are the Spielberg mega-hits Jurassic Park, and Jaws (the original “blockbuster”), both now clenching the top two box-office slots firmly in their toothy, bloodied maws.
1993’s Jurassic Park tore its way to the top of the ticket food chain, bringing in a whopping (by today’s sparse standards) $517,000 across 230 venues (mostly drive-ins).
Jaws came in a close second, bringing home $516,000, an even more impressive feat considering that it was released at only 187 theaters, and a full 45 years after it first swam into (and under) our collective psyches.
Well-crafted Spielbergian escapism, tempered with a primal fear of the unknown seems to be the order of the day for pandemic-weary movie fans... for now.
Next month however, it’s in with the new (sorta), with Disney’s live-action Mulan remake coming out on July 24, and Christopher Nolan’s mysterious time-travel spy-epic Tenet being issued July 31.
It’s unknown if these new, hugely expensive “event” type movies can be profitable under this new, low box-office receipts metric (Tenet’s theatrical release actually hinged on more theaters being reopened), but either way, we here at The Movie Sleuth will be waiting with baited breath, so hold on to your butts!
MR