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 the tradition of star-stuffed extravaganzas like "The Ten Commandments" (1956) and "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956). "The Exorcist" (1973) and, though not effects-driven, George Lucas's "American Graffiti" (1973) were the first serious steps in Hollywood's transformation into an industry built around high-budget B-themed movies. 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 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 $55 million on a movie about a children's comic book character and make a very handsome profit. Not an all-time record-breaker like "Jaws" and "Star Wars", it was merely the biggest box-office hit of 1979. 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 would rule.