A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN VARIETY (JULY 1977)

From an article in Wikipedia about Disney’s director Robert Stevenson

In July 1977, Variety reported that his track record at Disney made him “the most commercially successful director in the history of films.” At the end of 1976, he had 16 films on Variety‘s list of all-time domestic rental films, more than any other director at the time, with the second most successful having only 12. The Shaggy D.A. was to become his 17th, all being Disney films. The total US and Canadian rentals for these 17 pictures was $188,000,000, which Variety said translated into roughly $250 million in world rentals or an estimated world box office gross of $750 million.

Apparently, reporting of the domestic box-office rentals was the most common way of reporting box-office numbers during the late 70’s and early 80’s.  And that with this method of determining of how success was measured, we can easily conclude that Spielberg’s current status as Hollywood’s most commercially successful director began after the release of Raiders Of The Lost Ark in June of 1981, but before June of 1982.

June 1982.  A month that saw the release of two hit films with Spielberg’s name on them.  The 2nd of those two films was officially directed by Spielberg and would become the biggest money-maker of its time.  The first of those two films ends with the end credits starting off with Spielberg’s name…”A Steven Spielberg production”…Usually for most films whose end credits start off with a singular name intended to remind audiences of the movie’s leading creative force, that name is most often reserved for the film’s director.  But for this particular movie, the situation was a unique one.  Unique…and well, quite critical.  Especially for Christian TV owners.

Anyway, it’s important to note that Spielberg’s current status as Hollywood’s most commercially successful director began during a period of time when reporting of the domestic box-office rentals was the most common way of reporting box-office numbers.  

“It’s important, Marion.  Trust me.”

So there are four major measurements of financial box-office numbers…

• Domestic rentals
• Domestic grosses.
• World-wide rentals.
• World-wide grosses.

Looking at the Variety article from July 1977, we see that the preferred measurement used in the report was domestic rentals.  We can also see how much more of the total box-office market that the domestic market was compared to the rest of the international market leading up to 1977.  The domestic box-office market was roughly 75% of the world-wide market for all of director Robert Stevenson’s films from the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s.  Today, the domestic box-office market is far less than 50% of the world-wide market.  It wasn’t until the mid-1980’s and beyond did the international markets began to rapidly grow and expand.

And so it’s easy to conclude that domestic box-office rentals would have been the PREMIERE choice for determining box-office success for Hollywood’s leading directors.