Two years ago, attendance at movie theaters had fallen off so dramatically that people in the film industry were beginning to wonder whether it was the death knell for moviegoing. Fingers began pointing in every direction, looking for blame. Theories on everything from sticky cinema floors to high concession prices to rude moviegoers to films becoming available too soon on DVD were offered up as likely culprits. Many theater operators blamed Hollywood for making a spate of films no one wanted to see.

Last summer, there was a slight uptick in theater attendance. This summer, things have gone even better. Summer box-office receipts have topped $4 billion for the first time in history, up $400 million over last summer.

It was only a few years ago that a $100 million take at the box office was the benchmark for declaring a movie a smash hit. This summer, four films have topped the $300 million mark in the United States alone -- "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Spider-Man 3," "Shrek the Third" and "Transformers." Fourteen films have crossed the $100 million threshold, with at least another latecomer -- "Superbad" -- looking to do the same soon. Even not very good movies, such as "Rush Hour 3," have made more than $100 million.

The fourth weekend in August is usually a time when movie attendance is on the downswing, as the big-kid audience that fuels the summer surge gets ready to go back to school and Hollywood begins unloading such "iffy" films as "The Nanny Diaries," which the studios aren't sure how to market. But last weekend, sales for the top 12 films rose 7 percent, to $90.2 million, from a year earlier, according to Media By Numbers, which keeps tabs on the film industry. It hasn't just been the summer that has seen bigger numbers, either. So far this year, ticket sales are up 7.2 percent, to $6.7 billion, with attendance growing a healthy 2.5 percent.

One might expect, or at least hope, that it was originality or maybe better scripts that sparked this renewed interest in moviegoing by the public. But eight of the top 14 summer films were sequels. And it was the third time around for three of the $300 million films -- "Pirates," "Shrek the Third" and "Spider-Man 3" -- sequels to sequels, all of whose reviews were decidedly mixed at best. "Transformers" is not quite so original, either, having arrived with a built-in audience from a Hasbro toy line dating back to the 1980s, as well as a TV series.

Nevertheless, there were some originals that fared fairly well at the box office. Adam Sandler's young fans turned out in droves to see him goofing on the gay-marriage theme in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," a film that managed to both poke stereotype fun at the subject and then turn around to become all sympathetic and righteous. Or perhaps it was Rob Schneider's over-the-top ethnic stereotyping Asian character that tickled funny bones. At any rate, Sandler had the No. 1 movie for two weeks in a row, raking in more than $115 million so far.

Doing even better was "Knocked Up," a raunchy comedy about a career woman who discovers that a one-night indiscretion has left her with a lasting memory. Directed by Judd Apatow, who earlier had a hit with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" a couple of years ago and produced this year's late-summer raunchy teen comedy hit, "Superbad," "Knocked Up" has sold more than $150 million worth of tickets. Both were originals.

So was "Ratatouille," the amusing animated adventures of a rat who uses his love of cooking to advance the fortunes of a young chef and a failing Paris restaurant. It has crossed the $200 million mark.

Yet despite the success of "Ratatouille," "Shrek the Third" and "The Simpsons Movie," being a cartoon was no guarantee of box-office gold. Sony's expensive surfing-penguin movie, "Surf's Up," tanked. Perhaps it was simply that there had been one too many penguin movies, but only $55 million worth of tickets were sold to the movie, which some have said cost $100 million to make.

There were other box-office disappointments as well, including the storybook fantasy "Stardust," the love-in-the-kitchen romantic comedy "No Reservations," the Angelina Jolie thriller "A Mighty Heart" and "Evening," about a dying woman looking back on her life and regretting a long-ago romance that never lasted past summer.

For all the press and good reviews it received, Michael Moore's "Sicko," a film about the U.S. health-care mess, performed well enough. It hadn't cost a lot to produce and took in about $25 million, a good showing for a documentary. Yet that was a far cry from the $100 million earned three years earlier by Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," proving that the terrorist threat and the buildup to war in Iraq were more potent topics than health care.

None of those box-office disappointments had elements to pull in the 13- and 14-year-old male ticket buyers that many summer films aim for. Unfortunately, adults didn't turn out in record numbers for those films, either, the way they did for something as brawny and action-packed as "The Bourne Ultimatum" -- the third film in its series, which has taken in nearly $200 million so far -- or "Live Free or Die Hard," the fourth in that Bruce Willis series, whose predecessor was released 12 years earlier.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," fifth in that series, had the good marketing sense to be released just as the hubbub was exploding over author J.K. Rowling's imminent publication of the final book in her popular series. Reviews for the film were generally mixed, but that didn't stop Harry Potter fans from turning it into a $275 million hit.

 

mjanuson@projo.com

 

 

 

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)