became the highest-grossing film worldwide with rentals of $132 million, surpassing the $131 million earned by The Godfather. By the time of the third film in 1983, Variety reported that it had earned worldwide rentals of $270 million. Jaws was the highest-grossing film of all time until Star Wars, which debuted two years later. Star Wars surpassed Jaws for the U.S. record six months after its release and set a new global record in 1978. Across all of its releases Jaws has grossed $476.5 million worldwide; adjusted for inflation, it has earned almost $2 billion at 2011 prices and is the second-most successful franchise film after Star Wars. Including its 2022 reissue, it has grossed $265.8 million in the United States and Canada, equivalent to $1.2 billion at 2020 prices (based on an estimated 128,078,800 tickets sold), making it the seventh-highest-grossing movie of all time adjusted for ticket price inflation. In the United Kingdom, it is the seventh-highest-grossing film to be released since 1975, earning the equivalent of over £70 million in 2009/10 currency, with admissions estimated at 16.2 million. Jaws has also sold 13 million tickets in Brazil, the second-highest attendance ever in the country behind Titanic. On television, ABC aired it for the first time on November 4, 1979 right after its theatrical re-release. The first U.S. broadcast received a Nielsen rating of 39.1 and attracted 57 percent of the total audience, the second-highest televised movie audience at the time behind Gone with the Wind and the fourth-highest rated. In the United Kingdom, 23 million people watched its inaugural broadcast in October 1981, the second-biggest TV audience ever for a feature film behind Live and Let Die. Critical reception Jaws received mostly positive reviews upon release. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars, calling it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings". Variety's A. D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent". According to The New Yorkers Pauline Kael, it was "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made ... [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way". For New Times magazine, Frank Rich wrote, "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from