![first star wars 1977 full movie first star wars 1977 full movie](https://www.laughingplace.com/w/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/comic-analysis-star-wars-1977-10.jpeg)
We owned another theater in Hollywood that wasn’t very nice.
![first star wars 1977 full movie first star wars 1977 full movie](https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/147767-tv-feature-what-order-should-you-watch-all-the-star-wars-films-image1-1wdfjceytb.jpg)
They said we had to live up to our commitment, but we wanted to keep control of Star Wars. After opening weekend, we went to Paramount, but they wouldn’t budge. Fox has such limited expectations for the film he said that two weeks would be all they needed. We had two weeks available before we had to play William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, from Paramount. Fox’s general sales manager at the time, the late Peter Myers, called and said George Lucas really wanted the Chinese. Once in awhile, you’d play a picture from someone else. Mann’s main customers were Paramount and Warner Bros. GLEASON In those days, you had studio customers. Lenihan in the ’70s, when he booked ‘Star Wars’ into San Francisco’s Coronet, and today. I was a rookie buyer at Theatre Management Inc., based in San Francisco, and cocky enough to think my pick of The Deep - with Jacqueline Bisset in that wet T-shirt - was going to do a lot of business.
![first star wars 1977 full movie first star wars 1977 full movie](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDljNTQ5ODItZmQwMy00M2ExLTljOTQtZTVjNGE2NTg0NGIxXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODkzNTgxMDg@._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,0,140,207_.jpg)
REID We hadn’t seen Star Wars before we had to choose. It played there until Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in December, and we were still hitting our holdover numbers. On opening day at the Coronet, there were lines around the block. I tease Travis all the time that the only time I ever won was when he picked The Deep for a theater in Redding, Calif., while I picked Star Wars. LENIHAN I was 23 and booking country towns in Northern California for United Artists, which also owned the Coronet Theatre in San Francisco. But it ultimately flipped around: If you wanted Star Wars, you had to play the other film.
![first star wars 1977 full movie first star wars 1977 full movie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Star_Wars_Phantom_Menace_poster.jpg)
REID I think it did more or less start that way - Fox making you take Star Wars if you wanted Other Side of Midnight. The big one was supposed to be Poltergeist. Five years later, the same thing happened with two Steven Spielberg movies, Poltergeist and E.T. We thought we got hosed because the competition got the big “A track” picture, The Other Side of Midnight. I was working for a circuit called Sameric Theatres in Philadelphia. The cast meant nothing, and no one knew who George Lucas was. LOMIS In the months before it opened, a lot of the older guys thought of Star Wars as a kiddie movie. The running joke as that when George Lucas made his final pitch to Alan Ladd Jr., who was running Fox at the time, Laddie said no, but he said it so softly nobody heard him. There were a lot of people at Fox who didn’t want to make Star Wars. GLEASON I was president of Mann Theatres, which had the Chinese in Hollywood and theaters in Westwood. Chuck Viane, 70, the former head of distribution at Disney Bob Lenihan, 61, president of programming at AMC Theatres Travis Reid, 61, head of distribution at Broad Green Pictures (Reid and Lenihan were friends and admitted hippies living in San Francisco in 1977) and Larry Gleason, 75, now with Arenas Entertainment. Here, THR talks to five buyers who were part of the Star Wars revolution - after opening on 42 screens, the film expanded to 1,750 and stayed in theaters for over a year - on their way to becoming Hollywood players: Erik Lomis, 57, now head of distribution at The Weinstein Co. The decisions - right or wrong - defined careers. In those days, film buyers had to bid blind for titles (trade screenings happened at the eleventh hour).
FIRST STAR WARS 1977 FULL MOVIE MOVIE
The Other Side of Midnight, based on Sidney Sheldon’s potboiler, was supposed to be the studio’s big summer hit, while George Lucas’ movie was considered the “B track” for theater owners nationwide. Even executives at 20th Century Fox had their doubts. The Force was definitely not with Star Wars in the months leading up to its release over Memorial Day weekend in 1977.