Most of the B-movie production houses founded during the exploitation era collapsed or were subsumed by larger companies as the field's financial situation changed in the early 1980s. Even a comparatively cheap, efficiently made genre picture intended for theatrical release began to cost millions of dollars, as the major movie studios steadily moved into the production of expensive genre movies, raising audience expectations for spectacular action sequences and realistic special effects. Intimations of the trend were evident as early as "Airport" (1970) and especially in the mega-schlock of "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "Earthquake" (1973), and "The Towering Inferno" (1974). Their disaster plots and dialogue were B-grade at best; from an industry perspective, however, these were pictures firmly rooted in a tradition of star-stuffed extravaganzas. "The Exorcist" had demonstrated the drawing power of big-budget, effects-laden horror. But the tidal shift in the majors' focus owed largely to the enormous success of three films: Steven Spielberg's creature feature "Jaws" (1975) and George Lucas's space opera "Star Wars" (1977) had each, in turn, become the highest-grossing film in motion picture history. "Superman", released in December 1978, had proved that a studio could spend on a movie about a children's comic book character and turn a big profit—it was the top box-office hit of 1978. Blockbuster fantasy spectacles like the original 1933 "King Kong" had once been exceptional; in the new Hollywood, increasingly under the sway of multi-industrial conglomerates, they ruled.