Released the same same weekend has Star Wars
Talk about bad timing. Still was a huge hit at the box office and finished 2nd overall in 1977.
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MovieChat Forums > Smokey and the Bandit (1977) Discussion > Released the same same weekend has Star ...
Man, Star Wars almost made more than the next three top films of the year combined!
Star Wars = $307,263,857
Smokey and the Bandit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saturday Night Fever = 337,346,072
*An interesting fact is that Harrison Ford had TWO hit films in 1977. Star Wars and.... Heroes. Heroes only missed being in the Top 10 of 1977 by less than two million dollars, as a matter of fact.
1977 Worldwide Box Office
1 Star Wars $307,263,857
2 Smokey and the Bandit $126,737,428
3 Close Encounters of the Third Kind $116,395,460
4 Saturday Night Fever $94,213,184 $94,213,184
5 A Bridge Too Far $50,750,000
6 The Deep $47,346,365 $47,346,365
7 The Spy Who Loved Me $46,838,673
8 Oh, God! $41,687,243 $41,687,243
9 Annie Hall $38,251,425 $38,251,425
10 Semi-Tough $37,187,139
11 Pete's Dragon $35,488,000
12 Heroes $33,500,000
13 High Anxiety $31,063,038
14 Exorcist II: The Heretic $30,749,142
15 The Rescuers $29,000,000
16 Slap Shot $28,000,000
17 Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo $28,000,000
18 The Gauntlet $26,414,658
19 The Turning Point $25,933,445
20 Freaky Friday $25,642,000
21 The Other Side of Midnight $24,652,021
22 Looking for Mr. Goodbar $22,512,655
23 Julia $20,714,400
24 The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training $19,104,350
25 For the Love of Benji $17,732,000
26 New York, New York $16,400,000
27 Black Sunday $15,769,322
The way they tended to release movies back then was a little different then today. Smokey didn't get a big national release. It opened in the south first and like Star Wars wasn't really expected to do that well.
Star wars also didn't get a wide release at first, so the movies weren't always competing directly.