year, MGM used a "splash" approach on The Hucksters, opening in 350 theaters before expanding to 1,000 theaters a week later. In 1952, Terry Turner of RKO introduced "saturation booking" (similar to nationwide release but on a regional scale) on a reissue of King Kong and then expanded this concept with Warner Bros.' The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), planning to have most of its bookings in its first two months, opening in New York and Los Angeles before expanding to 1,422 theaters within the first week. Joseph E. Levine, a distributor/exhibitor based in Boston who had worked on the "blitz" release of Duel in the Sun, hired Turner and adopted a similar approach on the 1958 US release of the Italian film Attila, quickly moving 90 prints through regional distribution hubs, renting them to mostly low-end theaters where he could book short runs with favorable box office terms. Booking dense concentrations of venues in a region allowed for the effective use of costly local TV and radio spots. Levine was able to generate over $2 million in US box office theatrical rentals with runs averaging only ten days per screen. Warner Bros. then paid him a $300,000 advance to secure the distribution rights to Hercules. Released the following summer with over 600 prints (175 of these played simultaneously in the greater New York City area) with the assistance of Warner's nationwide network of print exchanges, the film secured $4.7 million in rentals. In 1974, Tom Laughlin gave The Trial of Billy Jack, a sequel to his independently distributed Billy Jack, one of the widest releases to date, opening in 1,200 theatres in the United States on November 13. The following year, Breakout was the first major studio film to go into wide release in its opening week, with Columbia Pictures distributing 1,325 prints nationwide, combined with a heavy national advertising campaign. The following month, Jaws was released in a similar way on 409 screens, expanding to nearly 1,000 by mid-August in conjunction with nationwide advertising. The modest success of Breakout and the blockbuster success of Jaws led other distributors to follow suit with other mass-market films. In December 1980, Any Which Way You Can beat the record set by Breakout, opening in a record 1,541 theaters. The growth in the number and size of multiplexes since the 1980s, increasing the availability of screens with more flexible scheduling, facilitated this