in each theater, with an average of $70,000, equivalent to $300,000 at modern ticket prices. Within its first month it had grossed $7.4 million nationwide, ($ in modern dollars) by which time Warners' executives expected it to easily surpass My Fair Ladys $34 million take to become the studio's most financially successful film. The huge crowds attracted to the film forced the studio to expand it into wide release very quickly, to 366 screens. At the time that releasing strategy had rarely been used for anything but exploitation films. Many of the theaters in large cities were not located near downtowns, where Warners had booked Magnum Force, the Dirty Harry sequel, before planning the release of The Exorcist. In February it accounted for 15 percent of all Warners' grosses in key markets. None of the theaters were in Black neighborhoods such as South Central Los Angeles since the studio did not expect that audience to take much interest in the film, which had no Black characters. But after the theater in predominantly white Westwood that had shown the film was overwhelmed with moviegoers from South Central, it was quickly booked into theaters in that neighborhood. Black American enthusiasm for The Exorcist has been credited with ending mainstream studio support for blaxploitation movies, since Hollywood realized that Black audiences would flock to films that did not have content specifically geared to them. The New York Times took notice that the audience lined up to see the film was between one-quarter and one-third Black at one theater on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a mostly white neighborhood of the city, showing the film in late January. "A lot of blacks relate to voodoo and witchcraft and that kind of devil stuff," one Black patron said, when asked why so many Black people were sufficiently attracted to the film to go to such lengths to see it. "Many still believe in black magic, especially those from Haiti and the Deep South." The Exorcist earned $66.3 million ($ in modern dollars) in distributors' rentals during its theatrical release in 1974 in the United States and Canada, becoming the second most popular film of that year (trailing The Sting which earned $68.5 million) and Warners' highest-grossing film of all time. The high returns were made possible by the use of four-wall distribution, where the contract provides that the studio rents the theater from the