Powered by Spider-Man's amazing $404 million-plus take and another $300 million drummed up by Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones, Hollywood finished the summer with a whopping $3.14 billion in ticket--the best season ever at the box office.
This year's unprecedented haul exceeded last summer's previous record of $3.06 billion, according to box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, which tallied the domestic movie theater receipts for the period bookendeded by Memorial Day and Labor Day, aka the summer movie season.
"The last seven weeks notwithstanding, this was a really great summer for moviegoers," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "May and June were record-breaking months [but overall] it was not the slam dunk that we thought it would be."
While Hollywood rang up a 2.5 percent gain in revenue this summer over last, Dergarabedian notes that attendance was down about 1 percent.
Despite movie studios reaping huge windfalls from their blockbuster entries, ticket sales for multiplexes actually dipped below 2001's 542 million paid admissions and fell far short of 1999's all-time high of 589 million turnstile turns. Theater owners offset the decline in customers by raising ticket prices.
But that didn't stop most moviegoers from checking out the most-hyped popcorn flicks.
Prognosticators had figured the biggest winner would be Attack of the Clones, especially with George Lucas embracing a less-Jar-Jar-is-more approach. But the second prequel failed to generate the kind of Force usually associated with a Star Wars film, and finished a distant second to Spider-Man.
Spidey got a jump on the Jedi by hitting theaters in early May, earning a record $114 million in its opening weekend. The film currently sits at number five among all-time blockbusters and helped push Sony's 2002 tally to a whopping $1.32 billion (with fall and holiday releases still to come). The record revenue also broke the old mark of $1.27 billion, set by Sony in 1997.
Sony was also helped by blockbusters like XXX, Mr. Deeds and Men in Black II.
Other big hits included New Line's Austin Powers in Goldmember, Fox's Minority Report, Paramount's The Sum of All Fears and Universal's The Bourne Identity.
Early kid-oriented films like Warner Bros.' Scooby-Doo, Disney's Lilo & Stitch and DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron did well, but later entries, like Sony's Stuart Little 2, Dimension's Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams and especially Disney's The Country Bears underachieved.
In recent weeks, Disney's Signs has dominated and the summer's biggest sleeper hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, continues to impress. The romantic comedy, which cost $5 million to make, has raked in $83 million and could cross the $100 million mark in the coming weeks, making it one of the most profitable indie films of all time.
"All these films are benefiting from the general downturn in the marketplace," adds Dergarabedian. "This is the typical slow-down period."
There were also some flat-out dogs this summer. Among the biggest bombs: Eddie Murphy's much-delayed The Adventures of Pluto Nash, the Chris Rock-Anthony Hopkins' mismatch Bad Company, Nicolas Cage's WWII epic Windtalkers and Harrison Ford's submarine tale K-19: The Widowmaker.
Despite the late-summer slide, 12 films will hit the $100 million mark, as compared to 10 a year ago.
Here are the top 10 films of the summer, as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
1. Spider-Man, $404 million
2. Star Wars: Episode II?Attack of the Clones, $300.5 million
3. Austin Powers in Goldmember, $203.5 million
4. Signs, $195.5 million
5. Men in Black II, $189.5 million
6. Scooby-Doo, $151.5 million
7. Lilo & Stitch, $140.2 million
8. Minority Report, $129.9 million
9. Mr. Deeds, $124 million
10. XXX, $123.9 million