They'll never get caught. They're on a mission from God.
They're Back
The Most Dangerous Combination Since Nitro and Glycerine.
The show that really hits the road.
A briefcase full of blues.


Release Date: June 20, 1980

Universal

Domestic Total Gross: $57,229,890

2016: $183,178,200

The Blues Brothers is a 1980 American musical crime comedy film directed by John Landis.[4] It stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from "The Blues Brothers" musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. The film's screenplay was written by Aykroyd and Landis. It features musical numbers by rhythm and blues (R&B), soul, and blues singers James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and John Lee Hooker. The film is set in and around Chicago, Illinois, where it was filmed. It features non-musical supporting performances by John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Charles Napier, and Henry Gibson.
The story is a tale of redemption for paroled convict Jake and his brother Elwood, who set out on "a mission from God" to save from foreclosure the Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. To do so, they must reunite their R&B band and organize a performance to earn $5,000 needed to pay the orphanage's property tax bill. Along the way, they are targeted by a destructive "mystery woman", Neo-Nazis, and a country and western band—all while being relentlessly pursued by the police.
Universal Studios, which had won the bidding war for the film, was hoping to take advantage of Belushi's popularity in the wake of Saturday Night Live, Animal House, and the Blues Brothers' musical success; it soon found itself unable to control production costs. The start of filming was delayed when Aykroyd, new to film screenwriting, took six months to deliver a long and unconventional script that Landis had to rewrite before production, which began without a final budget. On location in Chicago, Belushi's partying and drug use caused lengthy and costly delays that, along with the destructive car chases depicted onscreen, made the final film one of the most expensive comedies ever produced.
Concerns that the film would fail limited its initial bookings to less than half those a film of its magnitude normally received. Released in the United States on June 20, 1980, it received generally positive reviews. It earned just under $5 million in its opening weekend and went on to gross over $115 million in theaters worldwide before its release on home video. It has become a cult classic, spawning the sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, 18 years later, which was a critical and commercial failure.