Super Fly (1972), Coffy (1973) and The Mack (1973): Under- and Over-Estimating Blaxploitation Box Office

Abstract

This article examines in detail the box-office performances of three well-known and successful Blaxploitation films from the early 1970s: Super Fly (1972), Coffy (1973) and The Mack (1973). It does so in order both to re-evaluate the extent of their commercial success as individual films in relation to widely-quoted data taken from Variety that is repeated in the existing literature, and also as a means of assisting in judging the size of the overall U.S. Blaxploitation market in relation to the wider box-office performance of non-Blaxploitation content of the period. It then uses this re-evaluated data to test whether box-office data relating to Blaxploitation films as it is presented in the existing literature on the subject is underestimated, overestimated or entirely accurately presented, and also to see to what extent Blaxploitation box-office contributed to enabling a recovery in the depressed Hollywood film-making environment of this period (1970–72).