John Scalzi - SciFi Movies Made Money Before Star Wars, Too
Here's a fun question I received:
"Did science fiction films do well financially before Star Wars? It seems like that's when Hollywood realized scifi was big business."
Well, to be sure, no one had ever seen a science fiction movie do business like Star Wars did: It made $300 million in its original release in 1977, back when the average ticket price was $2.23, as opposed to the $7.18 it is today. Adjusted for inflation, its domestic box office is more than $1.2 billion over several releases (as discussed previously here). It's fair to say Star Wars got Hollywood's attention.
However, it's not fair to say that Hollywood never saw science fiction as a moneymaker before Star Wars, either -- quite a number of science fiction movies did gangbuster business from the very start of the industry: The highest grossing film of 1916, for example, was a version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That movie made $8 million at the box office, which adjusts to about $160 million today -- a nice-sized hit in any year. For additional perspective, here are the adjusted domestic grosses of several pre-Star Wars movies.
Frankenstein (1931)
The classic Universal horror/science fiction flick was the number one box office hit in 1931, with a $12 million gross. Of course, in the days of the Great Depression, the cost of a ticket was less than a quarter -- 23 cents, to be exact. So adjusting for inflation, Frankenstein raked in the equivalent of close to $375 million, which is a hit of historic proportions. No wonder Universal then cranked out a whole bunch of other monster movies in rapid succession.
Destination Moon (1950)
This movie, written by Robert Heinlein, was one of the first to attempt a realistic portrayal of men trying to get to the moon -- "realistic" here making allowances for the relatively primitive special effects of the time, mind you. It made $5 million, which comes out to just under $70 million today, or in the neighborhood of last year's remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, which made $80 million.
On the Beach (1959)
One of earliest movies to use a science fiction premise (nuclear apolcalypse! Everybody dies!) without actually advertising itself as science fiction -- because Gregory Peck couldn't possibly be in a science fiction movie, you see. Be that as it may, not only was the picture lauded for its intelligent portrayal of people dealing with the end of life as we know it, it also brought in the equivalent of close to $140 million. It will be interesting to see if The Road, a similarly-themed post-apocalyptic flick also not advertising itself as science fiction, comes close to these numbers when it's released later this year.
Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Prior to Star Wars, this was science fiction's one-two punch at the box office, and it was a pretty hefty combination: Planet of the Apes, helped by the star power of Charlton Heston, brought in $32 million -- equivalent to $175 million today, and a sum no one would complain about. 2001, with its groundbreaking special effects and oh-so-serious weirdness, did even better: $56 million, or just over $300 million today, which would have put it at number four in last year's box office list, just below the latest Indiana Jones flick. The two movies in fact helped spur a series of largely dystopic, serious-minded science fiction flicks, such as Silent Running and Soylent Green (not to mention, in the case of Apes, a bunch of sequels).
Logan's Run (1976)
Really the last major science fiction movie before Star Wars hit, this one closes out the era that began with Apes and 2001. And how does it do in the box office? $26 million, which comes to about $87 million today. Not a blockbuster, but since it made three times what it cost to make, it was still a nicely profitable little flick that no one would complain about.
Which is to say that even before Star Wars, science fiction was adding nicely to Hollywood's bottom line and even occasionally dropping a blockbuster or two. In other words, the Force is strong with this genre.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also Creative Consultant for the upcoming Stargate: Universe television series. His column appears every Thursday.
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I've always wondered how much the classic sci-fi B-Movies of the 50s made. Corman and Lippert and the notorious Bert I. Gordon kept making the things so they had to have been profitable. Of course having a budget of under $100k helped.
I do know Corman tried his hand at westerns at the beginning of his career but moved back to sci-fi and monster movies because they were far more bankable.
The big questions for The Road, for me anyway:
Does the infamous barbecue scene make the cut?
Can it possibly be as depressing as the book?
pwstrain, the second half of The Road's theatrical trailer makes me think it just might work.
What of Fantastic Voyage? Which was Asimov and I think about 1970.
I wonder about Fantastic Voyage as well. Asimov actually wrote a tie-in novel(it wasn't an original), though it was released much earlier than the film.
My first ever issue of Starlog was, I think, the 6th, which had (ironically enough) Destination Moon as the cover feature. My mother bought it for me because it had a spaceship on the cover. In the front materials, the news clips, there was a notice that because of the financial success of Wizards (the Bakshi movie), 20th Century Fox had great hopes for the box-office potential of a new George Lucas SF movie called Star Wars.
So use that as your gauge -- Fox was expecting and would have been happy with the financial results of Bakshi's Wizards. It's often hard to see in hindsight, but Star Wars was not STAR WARS until after it came out and hit the public just right. 1977 was a time of financial panic and crisis -- just like now. I'm kind of interested to see if there's a new movie that comes out in the next year or so that hits the public just right to become the next Star Wars type phenomenon. and it doesn't have to be SF (Gone With the Wind did pretty much the same thing for Great Depression audiences).
Only info I can find on Fantastic Voyage is here (www.the-numbers.com in case the link doesn't work).
US gross of $12 million and released in 1966. Using the '68 numbers above, that adjusts to about $65 million now.
Gregory Peck was in at least one other not science fiction movie: The Boys from Brazil.
What about "War of the Worlds"?! That was a great movie and a classic. How did it rank?
I'm not sure if you'd really consider it sci-fi, but what about King Kong?
And what about the sci-fi classic, Forbidden Planet? With no Forbidden Planet, there wouldn't have been a Star Trek.
A very important distinction to make in comparing grosses of films like Frankenstein with Star Wars is the lack of the multi-plex and the relatively fixed presentation cycle (one-week runs) in those days. Today, even kids in small towns have a hard time understanding the concept or importance of a film being "held over." The huge number of screens available is what really makes the huge boxoffice draws possible.