1970s in film was far less successful. "The Towering Inferno" teamed Steve McQueen and Paul Newman against a fire in a San Francisco skyscraper. The film cost a whopping $14 million to produce (expensive for its time), and won Academy Awards for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Song. The same year, the epic "Earthquake" featured questionable effects (camera shake and models) to achieve a destructive 9.9 earthquake in Los Angeles. Despite this, the film was one of the most successful of its time, earning $80 million at box office. By the late 1970s, the novelty had worn off and the disasters had
The Swarm (film) fired from the nearby coast, destroying all of the bees. The film was announced in 1974 at the height of the disaster movie craze. It was part of $38 million worth of projects Irwin Allen had lined up, others including "The Day the World Ended" (a project which was retitled and released in 1980 as "When Time Ran Out...".) The script was written by Stirling Sillipant, who had written "The Towering Inferno" for Allen. He said in December 1974 that Allen hoped to start filming in April 1975. Production was delayed in part because Allen decided to leave Fox for