Jaws Opens in Theaters

Setting the scene

By the early 1970s Hollywood studios feared expensive spectacles after flops like Cleopatra, and summer had been a dumping ground for weak releases. Director Steven Spielberg, still in his twenties, had impressed executives with Duel but was untested on a big budget. Universal Pictures bet roughly $9 million on adapting Peter Benchley's bestselling 1974 novel about a great white shark terrorizing a New England beach town.

What happened

Jaws premiered in limited release on June 20, 1975, then went wide with a saturation TV advertising blitz that was unusual for the era. Spielberg's thriller starred Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hooper, and Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint aboard the Orca. John Williams' two-note ostinato and Bruce the mechanical shark turned a B-movie premise into a cultural panic about swimming.

Why it still matters

The film grossed about $470 million worldwide and is widely credited with inventing the modern summer blockbuster: wide release, heavy marketing, and event status. Studios rushed shark imitators and scheduled tentpoles for June and July for decades afterward. Memorable detail: the shark barely appears on screen because Bruce kept malfunctioning, forcing Spielberg to suggest the creature through floating barrels and Bernard Herrmann-style dread instead of gore.

Background

Universal's wide release and TV spots changed how studios sold event movies.