NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
There are two ways to look at the summer movie season that winds down this Labor Day weekend.
The glass-half-full view recalls how a human arachnid, a green ogre and a teen-age wizard helped set new records at the box office.
The glass-half-empty take attributes the record $3.9 billion in box office receipts to ever-rising ticket prices -- not to total attendance, which was actually down for the second consecutive summer. This view also looks past the superpowers of "Spider-Man 2," the playfulness of "Shrek 2" and the magic of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," and all but yawns.
"The summer was characterized by mostly midrange performers," said Brandon Gray, editor and publisher of movie tracker BoxOfficeMojo.com. Typically a summer season will rack up five blockbusters, not just three.
There were other notable surprises. First up: "Fahrenheit 9/11," which just about everyone expected to do well, given the priceless publicity the anti-Bush flick got in the weeks leading up to its June release.
"But I don't think anyone expected it to do over $100 million," said Abby Wike, a box-office analyst with ReelSource. "It really did blow every other documentary ever made out of the water."
As of the end of August, "Fahrenheit 9/11," had reaped nearly $180 million in global ticket sales, more than three times the worldwide draw for the second highest-grossing documentary of all time, "Bowling for Columbine," also by Michael Moore.
The biggest disappointment? "The Terminal," the Tom Hanks film about an East European stranded at New York's JFK airport.
"It didn't live up to expectations," said Gray, "in part because, ultimately, spending time in an airport terminal ranks somewhere around spending time at the DMV. It's not something that people want to plunk down $10 to do for two hours."
DreamWorks, distributor of "The Terminal," isn't licking any wounds. The runaway success of "Shrek 2" -- the No. 1 summer hit, with $437 million in North American ticket sales as of the end of August -- has put the up-and-comer at No. 4 in domestic ticket sales ahead of the pre-holiday season.
Sequels go, remakes no
Sony Pictures can credit Spider-Man's battles with the evil Doc Ock for lifting the Sony Corp. (SNE: Research, Estimates) unit past Warner Bros. to take the box-office lead. Ranked third behind Sony and Warner Bros., a Time Warner (TWX: Research, Estimates) subsidiary and corporate cousin of CNN/Money, is Twentieth Century Fox.
Noticeably absent from the race: Walt Disney Co., whose Buena Vista movie unit is headed for a dismal year after lording over the box office in 2003. Despite high hopes, July releases "King Arthur" and "The Village" were big disappointments.
With "King Arthur," Disney hoped to repeat last summer's surprise hit, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." Last year Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley were able to resurrect what had been considered a dead genre -- pirate movies. This year, a similar plan -- to breathe life into the moribund medieval-tales genre --bombed.
" 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was, at its root, a fun swashbuckler," said Gray. " 'King Arthur' was dark and dank. They forgot the fun."
Disney wasn't the only studio to abandon levity. Overall, summer movies were especially heavy on adult themes and light on kids' fare. That's one reason "Shrek 2" beat Spidey at the box office to end the season No. 1 overall, said Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com.
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| In a summer of adult movies, the humor in Shrek stood out and may have lifted the ogre to No. 1. |
" 'Shrek 2' totally cleaned up," said Pandya. One reason, he said: It was the only comedy around for part of the summer.
The blockbuster success of Shrek, Spidey and Harry points to another observation worth noting: Even though two of last summer's big domestic flops -- "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" -- were sequels, their disappointing performance did not deter studios from banking big-time on still more sequels this summer.
Counting "The Bourne Supremacy" starring Matt Damon, four of the five top-grossing films of the summer were new takes on old story lines.
Pandya said studios' love affair with sequels will continue, because, despite high production costs, franchise movies are potentially lucrative.
| Summer in Hollywood
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"When they work, they work big," said Pandya. It's not just ticket sales, but also the opportunity to spin off buzz and profits by releasing special DVD editions of the original movie. Plus, the sequels are already known quantities overseas, so studios don't have to worry much about building interest.
That's one reason why Twentieth Century Fox, owned by News Corp. (NWS: Research, Estimates), came out with "Garfield: The Movie" and "Alien vs. Predator." "They're based on characters we know." said Pandya.
Reviving old characters apparently works as long as they're not too old.
One big Hollywood bet that back-fired: remakes. Paramount, a unit of Viacom (VIAB: down $0.37 to $33.64, Research, Estimates) and the No. 8 studio by market share, had high hopes that contemporary takes on "The Stepford Wives," first done in 1975, and "The Manchurian Candidate," a 1962 original, would pay off. Neither 2004 release has broken even.
Disney's "Around the World in 80 Days" gets top prize as the biggest remake flop of the summer. With a $110 million production budget, the Jackie Chan comedy that's been done before in theaters and on television, has grossed a mere $44 million worldwide.
The horse race
Looking ahead to the home stretch of 2004, there's one upcoming flick that analysts agreed can't miss.
"The Incredibles," a computer animated feature about a superhero family trying to live a normal suburban life, is due out Nov. 5. One reason for the optimism: Disney and Pixar Animation Studios -- the co-creators of "Finding Nemo," "Monsters, Inc." and "Toy Story" -- are behind it.
Other expected box-office draws include: "Shark Tale," the latest animation from DreamWorks, due in theaters Oct. 1; "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie" from Paramount in November; and "Ocean's Twelve," the Warner Bros. follow-up to "Ocean's 11," starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, due to hit theaters come December.
All eyes, too, are on how the studios shake out at year-end. With Disney out of the running, and Sony and Warner Bros. locked in a tight race, analysts are reluctant to make wagers on who's going to end 2004 with the biggest share. Warner Bros. has the stronger lineup, analysts said, but many of those films won't debut until late in the year.
"It's going to be a close call," said BoxOfficeMojo.com's Gray.
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