It’s a fun question to get right at bar trivia night: The first blockbuster was the 1975 Steven Spielberg horror flick Jaws, because that’s the first time people were lined up around the block to see a film over and over again. Not to mention, as the first movie to pass the $100 million mark, the kind of money it made at the box office was nuts at the time. Two years later, in 1977, the record was broken by Star Wars (not yet “A New Hope”), which made $127 million in its first year and worldwide grossed $307 million against a budget of just $11 million. In 2026 dollars, that’s roughly $1.698 billion. So, yes, Jaws set a new financial goalpost, but Star Wars easily left it in the dust.
Still, the $100 million box office record was broken by Jaws and not Star Wars; therefore, technically, Jaws gets the crown, and that little shark gets to wear the crown forever, right? Not so fast. We can keep repeating that Jaws is the first blockbuster over and over again, but this is a mere technicality. Because the legacy of Star Wars is what changed the nature of how people in the late 20th century and into the 21st century think about going to the movies at all. Yes, Jaws was innovative, but if we lived in a timeline in which Jaws was never made, the world wouldn’t change that much. But just try to imagine a world without Star Wars coming out in 1977 and becoming a hit. Really try. Now that you’ve imagined that dystopian cinematic hellscape, can one honestly say that Jaws is the first true blockbuster?
