Have you ever been sitting in a packed theater
on opening night with a buzzing crowd
and wondered to yourself, why are
hit movies called blockbusters?
Let's find out on today's episode of Colossal Questions.
Nowadays, blockbuster is a word usually reserved
for big budget studio films that cost hundreds of millions
of dollars to make and expect to bring in hundreds of millions
more.
But the term actually goes back farther
than you might imagine to the 1940s during World War II.
Apparently, the original blockbusters
weren't major motion pictures with massive special effects
and monumental explosions.
They were just really big explosions like real ones.
That's right.
The term originally had nothing to do
with how much a movie made.
It described a big bomb that got its name because well, it could
bust an entire city block.
Yeah, not great.
As the big blockbusting bombs kept
being used throughout the rest of the war.
The term caught on and became more widespread.
The word made its way from the battlefield to everyday life
where people started using it here
and there to refer to anything particularly
explosive or over-the-top.
Finally, by the 1950s, people started
using the term blockbuster mostly just
to describe big budget movies with mass appeal
and major returns at the box office.
Maybe the first example of a movie
that was widely considered to be a blockbuster
was Jaws way back in 1975.
The classic flick about a shark attack raked in ticket sales
and had people lining up around the block to get in.
Ever since, the movie industry has only
put more and more effort into turning as many movies
and franchises as they can into blockbusters
with mixed results.
So sit back, have some popcorn, and try
to enjoy the ride because blockbuster fever isn't
ending anytime soon.
[music playing]