A movie that has achieved great popularity is called a ‘blockbuster’. This term originates from the theater industry, because when a very successful play is released, all other competing theaters on the block are busted and taken out of business. Ever since 1995, the movie industry categorizes a given production as a blockbuster if it makes more than $100,000,000 in ticket sales. Jaws was the first movie that went beyond the $100,000,000 mark. From that moment after, movie producers and directors decided to start creating pictures that will have a more mass appeal and will be watched by the widest audience possible. They started to release high budget productions and rely extensively on advertisements. The beginning of the blockbuster era happened when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas released the first episode of Start Wars in 1977. Of course, there is a lot of risk associated with blockbusters, because one can never be sure that the given movie will be successful and accepted by the audience. There are a lot of movies that went for blockbuster status, but turned out to be a complete flop.

Sometimes even lower budget movies are labeled as blockbusters. This happens when a low budget movie exceeds the expectations. For example, Fried Green Tomatoes was worth $13,000,000 to make, but then it earned about $80,000,000 at the box office. The same goes out for ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’.

There is a list with the top blockbuster movies, arranged by the money earned from ticket sales, not including the earnings from video rentals, DVD sales, or TV broadcasts. All amounts are in USD and the blockbuster list doesn’t take inflation into account. Because of the inflation factor, ticket prices have increased and this favors the most recent films. That’s why this list should serve only as a guide. The top five blockbuster movies currently are: Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Titanic still holds the number one blockbuster spot of all time, with total earnings of $1,845,034,188. Titanic was a production of 20th Century Fox / Paramount and was released back in 1997. Titanic also shares the record for most Oscar awards with Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

For extensive information on the top 4 companies in the online DVD Rental business, check out http://www.rental-reviews360.com. It contains a review of the service provided by Netflix, QwikFliks, Intelliflix and Blockbuster, plus there is a chart with a comparison between them.