1981 in film
overview of the events of 1981 in film
The following is an overview of events in 1981 in film, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies and festivals, a list of films released and notable deaths.
Highest-grossing films (U.S.)
The top ten films released in 1981 by box office gross in North America are as follows:
Events
January 20 – Former Governor of California and film actor Ronald Reagan is inaugurated president.
March 30 – The 53rd Academy Awards are postponed due to the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan earlier that day. They are held the following day with a message from the President recorded for the ceremony prior to the assassination attempt.
May 16 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie Heaven's Gate, a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it.
June 8 – Marvin Davis acquires 20th Century Fox for $720 million.
June 12 – Raiders of the Lost Ark is released by Paramount Pictures. It became Paramount's highest-grossing film of all time and set a major standard for many action-adventure movies to date and spawned four sequels.
August 21 – An American Werewolf in London is released and becomes a landmark in Visual Effects and Makeup.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1981 in film” is overview of the events of 1981 in film. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through film, overview and events, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q670635. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “1981 in film” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.