Shaft I'm led to wonder if, perhaps, the existence of what seems to be a large, hungry, black movie audience—an audience whose experiences and interests are treated mostly in token fashion by TV—might not be one of the more healthy and exciting developments on the current movie scene." Shaft greatly impacted future blaxploitation films which "crudely tried to emulate the success of Shaft and Sweetback, repeated, filled in, or exaggerated the ingredients of the Blaxploitation formula, which usually consisted of a pimp, gangster, or their baleful female counterparts, violently acting out a revenge or retribution motif against corrupt whites in the romanticized confines of the ghetto or inner city." Reception Box office performance The film was one of only three profitable movies that year for MGM, grossing what Time magazine called an "astonishing" $13 million on a budget of $500,000. The Los Angeles Times said the film cost $1 million and grossed $4.5 million. According to Variety by 1976 it earned $7.656 million in theatrical rentals. It not only spawned several years of "blaxploitation" action films, it earned enough money to save then-struggling MGM from bankruptcy. Public reception Shaft was extremely successful in theaters, which was a huge accomplishment for the then-struggling MGM studios. It was produced at a cost of $1.2 million while earning $10.8 million in its first year of distribution, $7 million in the U.S. alone. Critical reception The critical reception of Shaft was mixed. In general, the film was applauded for its innovation, success, and its lasting effect on the film industry. "Because of the film's positioning securely within the parameters of industry standards, Shaft was generally applauded by the critics both black and white, as being a breakthrough production in terms of expanding black representation in commercial cinema." Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "The strength of Parks's movie is his willingness to let his hero fully inhabit the private-eye genre, with all of its obligatory violence, blood, obscenity, and plot gimmicks. The weakness of 'Shaft,' I suspect, is that Parks is not very eager to inhabit that world along with his hero." Gene Siskel awarded two stars out of four and wrote that the film "offers little more than a rousing opening fight and a chance to see Roundtree glower while he models some fancy leather outfits." Variety wrote that the film was "directed by Gordon Parks with