What makes a Blockbuster?

The term 'blockbuster' means several things, but usually it means a financially successful film.

Some say this is a reference to long lines that used to gather for popular stage productions, lines inherited by the event films of the eighties and beyond. Others think it was inherited from a type of bomb capable of leveling an entire city block (a paltry measure of destruction in this day and age).

But regardless of the etymology, the classification of films as blockbusters was for many years very simple: if it grossed $100 million in the U.S., it was a blockbuster. If it didn't, it wasn't. But what do people mean when they use the term these days, thirty years after the first of the blockbusters hit the screen?

As it was recently pointed out to me, inflation renders past box-office figures essentially moot, and so it does to that $100 million benchmark as well. But finding an appropriate new one is difficult: there are movies that gross $200 million, but cost $200 million (like Superman Returns), and even a couple (reported) $300/$300 million club members (Spiderman 3, Pirates 3). So the rapidly inflating movie budgets (and public interest in them) is a factor.

This is not to mention the tracking of foreign grosses clouding the picture. There are plenty of films that disappoint in the States, only to break the bank overseas: Troy, for example, mostly flopped here ($133 m), but amassed nearly $500 million overall.

And then there's movies that don't break any records, but have a phenomenal budget to earnings ratio. The most famous example of this is the Blair Witch Project with $248 million on a $60 thousand dollar budget, but this summer's Knocked Up ($200 million on a $30 mill budget) and Superbad ($119 m on $20 m) both broke $100 million on relatively cheap expenses.

So I think, for movie nerds like me at least, when we say 'blockbuster' what we're really getting at is profit, and we need a benchmark for the 'blockbuster' that keeps that in mind.

I propose that to be referred to as a blockbuster, your film needs to make $100 million or more over its budget domestically, with the addendum that a $200 million worldwide profit also qualifies. This takes care of obvious hits on reasonable budgets (like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which cost $150 m and made $289 in the US alone), and our more problematic features with escalating costs (like Batman Begins, which barely outdid its $150 m budget here, but made $371 m worldwide).

A further sub-clause for films smaller in scope entails that if you gross five times your budget, it gives your film tentative blockbuster status, or at least makes it a "box office hit."

Glad we got this settled. These are the sorts of things that keep me up at night.