Life finds a way. And in the age of the Coronavirus, so does Steven Spielberg.
Twenty-seven years after its original 1993 release, Jurassic Park was the highest-grossing movie in U.S. theaters over the third weekend of June 2020. That’s more of a fluke than a legitimately impressive feat, given the pandemic circumstances, but it’s still a fascinating anomaly and, well, pretty darn cool.
With the number of operating theaters still at minimum nationally and no new major releases since early spring, the most recent 2020 movies like Trolls World Tour and The Invisible Man finally began to wane as Spielberg classics took over. Over the weekend of June 19-21 (as first reported by Deadline), Jurassic Park earned $517,600 at 230 sites to take the top spot.
Close behind? Spielberg’s Jaws, the very film that created the blockbuster era and the Summer Movie Season as we know it. The 1975 shark thriller earned $516,300 at 187 locations to nab the #2 slot, exactly 45 years after it was first released.
Other classics that made the Top 10: #6 Back to the Future ($131,600), #8 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ($126,000), and #10 The Goonies ($110,000).
What do all of those titles have in common? Yep, Steven Spielberg. Director of three and producer of two, Spielberg accounted for 5 of the Top 10 movies over a single weekend in June of 2020.
Now that’s my kind of Summer Movie Season.
(Check out my Steven Spielberg Retrospective “30+ Days of Spielberg“, which includes full reviews of every film he’s directed, plus my ranking of the entire Spielberg Canon.)