Remember When: ‘Jaws’ Defined the Summer Tentpole | No Film School

This is probably going to be hard for young people to grasp but there was no such thing as a summer tentpole when Jaws was released. People didn't go to the movies in summer in large numbers so big commercial movies weren't released in the summer.

Jaws also didn't create the summer tentpole because there was no big commercial Hollywood release the following year (1976) and, probably even harder for young folks to imagine, Star Wars was released in summer in 1977 because everyone including George Lucas expected it to flop. Star Wars was released in summer because there was no competition and George Lucas was paying Fox a fee to release Star Wars.

Out of an abundance of caution since George Lucas did not want to go bankrupt Star Wars did not even open in wide release–it opened as a platform release in a limited number of theaters and cities expanded as positive word-of-mouth spread. Star Wars was also the opposite of what a modern audience thinks of as a summer tentpole because it opened slowly and made its money in theaters across 9 months.

Despite two summer releases being huge commercial successes in three years Hollywood still released nothing in 1978 that anyone would define as a summer tentpole. Superman came out in 1978 and sure sounds like a classic summer release. But it was actually released in December, not summer, so even the success of Star Wars wasn't quite enough to usher in the era of the summer tentpole.