In the summer of 1975, "Jaws" opened and the term Blockbuster was born. Before that, there had been plenty of runaway hits that had made plenty of money, but nothing that people had continually gone back to see just for the thrill of it. There had been plenty of movies before then that had made a significant amount of money (even more than Jaws), but this was a turn in Hollywood's thinking towards making a film and marketing it. Action packed and generally more fast paced than other movies, Blockbusters are generally marketed towards a younger crowd (that, conveniently, is not in school over the summer). Budgets ballooned on the promise of a big return at the box office.
As time went on, the budgets went more towards bigger and better special effects that are way easier to market and less towards the script and plot. Thus, they began to get less intelligent to the point of most critics HATING the summer movie season more and more because the overall quality of the movies was waning. The Holidays had their own Blockbuster season as well with more family friendly fare launching during the period, just not to quite as big of a box office haul. Critics didn't hate this as much because it also coincided with the push for Academy Award films, so there was a good mix. Summers, however, with rare exception got sillier, more action bloated, and paper-thin plots until in the 2000s they just were shells of movies for marketing only.
Then the public started to get a little wiser, probably because they were thinking more with their wallets. Bigger budgeted movies were getting to be more of a gamble with mediocre openings or huge second week drop offs as people were more choosy in what they saw. This funnily corresponded with the rise of Geek culture. Suddenly, there was room for the Intelligent Blockbuster. Comic book movies started becoming popular and there was almost no such thing as a bonafide movie star anymore. People were no longer the draw. It was either the director (like Quentin Tarantino) or the actual plot that started drawing in the people.
So, now, in the last couple of years you've had much more intelligent fare doing increasingly well and the schlock that used to do so well before is an even bigger gamble for Hollywood. Christopher Nolan's movies are the new idea of a Blockbuster and Tarantino has begun to release his movies during the summer and studios are moving films around to get away from his weekend. That's pretty powerful stuff. Summer is also becoming less and less of an exclusive time to release the big movies. with the start and end of the season starting and ending earlier and later (respectively) every year. Look at this year, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" opened in March and, honestly, there are big films almost every week for the rest of the year. Probably won't be much of a drop off until January (when all the Academy Award bait will be coming out). Within the next few years, there may not even BE a drop off in a particular month as they see that people will go see a good movie REGARDLESS of the time of year.
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