20 Things You Didn't Know About The Blues Brothers

On the day after editing of the film was completed, Landis was called to the office of the head of Universal Pictures, Lew Wasserman. Sitting in the room with Wasserman was a gent named Ted Mann, head of Mann Theatre Chain, the largest string of movie houses in the Western United States.

Mann flat-out told Landis he would not book the film in any of his theatres that were in white neighbourhoods (which was almost all of them.) Mann stated that he didn't want black patrons attending his establishments, yet also didn't feel white viewers would want to see a film with singers like Aretha Franklin and Cab Calloway. He would screen the movie at a theatre in Compton, a predominately black neighbourhood in LA, but not in Westwood, only a few miles a way, which was a middle-class white community.

As a result of Mann's position (which had Wasserman's support,) the film received less than half the number of booked theatres for its initial release than similar-budgeted movies.

Still, on its first weekend, the film did respectable box office, playing in just under 600 theatres, and opening in second place behind a little film called The Empire Strikes Back.