Slump.

Hollywood was in trouble as the 1970s began. Audiences had been shrinking throughout the previous decade as television viewing increased. The collapse of the studio system meant that producers had to finance films independently, magnifying the importance of each film's success or failure at the box office. The production code had also disappeared, and now that movies were free to explore previously taboo adult themes, the old-fashioned, big-budget Hollywood epics began to bomb. Hello, Dolly! (1969), an overblown version of the stage hit, lost $16 million. By the late 1960s only one film in six was making a profit, and by 1971 weekly movie attendance in the United States had reached a low of 17.5 million, down from 80 million customers a week in Hollywood's peak year of 1946. Richard D. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, resigned in late 1970 in the face of the studio's $21.3 million deficit...