George Lucas's Blockbusting : a Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies, Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success

A comprehensive look at 300 of the most financially and/or critically successful motion pictures of all time—many made despite seemingly insurmountable economic, cultural, and political challenges—set against the prevailing production, distribution, exhibition, marketing, and technology trends of each decade in movie business history.

By meticulously compiling the details of how movies have been made and financed since the medium's inception, chronicling their performances at the box office, and offering expert commentary about the most important trends of the last one hundred years, the authors of this book have given readers a singularly unique perspective on the film-making industry and a superlative blueprint for future successful filmmaking ventures.

Taking us decade by decade, this book focuses on the revenues, costs, production and distribution of 300 of the most critically and financially successful movies of all time from the business's origins through 2005. Its numerous essays examine trends in war, noir, bio-drama, biblical, epic, musical, western, disaster, crime, and action adventure films, as well as the advent the summer movie, auteur filmmaking, and the revolutionary advances that have been made in film technology over time. Furthermore, its full complement of charts, graphs and diagrams presenting such things as salary histories, awards and honors, the number of principal photography days required, advertising expenditures, domestic versus overseas profits and more, also include conversions of past movie-making dollars into current dollar values for easy and relevant comparisons.

The ideal resource for filmmakers of every kind, this book evidences that blockbusters have not only been made on relatively low budgets before, but that they have been made time and time again through varying economic climates.

George Lucas's Blockbusting is indispensible reading for all who love and contribute to the film business.

Offers a comprehensive look at how 300 of the most successful motion pictures of all time were made and financed despite seemingly insurmountable economic, cultural, and political challenges. This book presents an examination of each film's costs and revenues as well as each era's prevailing production, distribution, exhibition, and marketing. A comprehensive look at 300 of the most financially and/or critically successful motion pictures of all time-- many made despite seemingly insurmountable economic, cultural, and political challenges-- set against the prevailing production, distribution, exhibition, marketing and technology trends of each decade in movie business history. Offers a comprehensive look at how three hundred of the most successful motion pictures of all time were made and financed despite seemingly insurmountable economic, cultural, and political challenges.