Star Wars At 40 (a round-up)

40 years ago today, Star Wars went on general release in the UK.

It premiered on 27th December 1977 and opened at the Leicester Square Theatre and the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road.  During its first seven days at the two venues, it took a record-breaking £117,690, beating out the previous record (held by Jaws) of £90,655 from 1976.  Back in the 70s, it was accepted practise that films always opened in London first, rolling out across the country afterwards and Star Wars stayed in London for over four weeks.  On the 29th January 1978 it went to twelve major cities around the UK and a further sixteen in Greater London the following week.

photo by Klaus Hiltscher, printed under creative commons from his Flickr 

The BBC reported: "Thousands of people are flocking to cinemas in the UK to watch the long-awaited blockbuster, Star Wars - a movie which is already setting US box offices alight.  First released in America seven months ago, [the film] has taken audiences by storm and outstripped last year's blockbuster Jaws to gross $156m (£108m) at the box office.  Carrie Fisher, Sir Alec Guiness and little known Harrison Ford star in this fairytale set in space."

To help celebrate the 40th anniversary, I ran a thread on the blog last year looking at various aspects of the film and to mark today's momentous date, here's a recap of those entries.

January
Star Wars At 40

February
The Marvel Comics

March
Stormtroopers!
The Millennium Falcon (pop-up 1)

April
The Topps Trading Cards

May
The First Public Screening
An Appreciation Of George Lucas (pop-up 2)

June
Production Design

July
The Toys

August
Helix & Letraset

September
A Brief History Of ILM
The Novelisation (pop-up 3)

October
Behind The Scenes
The UK TV Premiere (pop-up 4)

November
Poster Art

December
Music & Sound

May The Force Be With You!


sources:
Star Wars in the UK (from starwars.com)
1977: Star Wars Fever hits the UK (BBC)

2017 marked the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, which was released in the US on 25th May though it didn't hit the UK until 29th January 1978 (following a 27th December release in London).  I was lucky enough to see it in early 1978 and it remains my favourite film to this day.

To mark the anniversary, I ran a year-long blog thread about the film with new entries posted on the first Monday of each month.

May The Force Be With You!

Find all the entries in the thread here