On July 28, 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie
spoof about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi,
opened in U.S. theaters. It was the first film produced by
National Lampoon.
       
Produced with an estimated budget of $3 million, Animal House
became a huge, multi-million-dollar box-office hit, spawned a
slew of cinematic imitations and became part of pop-culture
history. 

On June 23, 1989, Tim Burton’s noir spin on the well-known
story of the DC Comics hero Batman was released in theaters.

Michael Keaton starred in the film as the multimillionaire Bruce
Wayne, who has transformed himself into the crime-fighting
Batman.

Reviews for the film were mixed, though most critics praised
Nicholson’s scene-stealing performance as the Joker.

  
Tim Burton will be 67 on August 25th.

Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss.

On June 20, 1975, Jaws, a film directed by Steven Spielberg that
made countless viewers afraid to go into the water, opened in
theaters. The story of a great white shark that terrorizes a New
England resort town became an instant blockbuster and the
highest-grossing film in movie history until it was bested by
1977’s Star Wars.

Jaws was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture
category and took home three Oscars, for Best Film Editing,
Best Original Score and Best Sound. The film, a breakthrough
for director Spielberg, then 27 years old, spawned several
sequels.

Jaws put now-famed director Steven Spielberg on the
Hollywood map.

Director Steven Spielberg holding the movie camera,
assisted by camera operator Michael Chapman, during
the filming of Jaws.

Bruce the mechanical shark.

Then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on
his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely
child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T. the Extra-
Terrestrial, which was released on June 11, 1982.

For Spielberg, E.T. marked a return to territory he had first
visited with the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977).

E.T. had stupendous success at the box office, eventually
raking in some $435 million (it was re-released in 1985 and
a special 20th-anniversary edition was issued in 2002).

Steven Spielberg with E.T.

On May 25, 1977, Memorial Day weekend opened with an
intergalactic bang as the first of George Lucas’ blockbuster
Star Wars movies hit American theaters.

The incredible success of Star Wars–it received seven Oscars,
and earned $461 million in U.S. ticket sales and a gross of close
to $800 million worldwide–began with an extensive, coordinated marketing push by Lucas and his studio, 20th Century Fox,
months before the movie’s release date.