With few flops, Hollywood enjoys a hot summer

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-17 09:38

LOS ANGELES – So far, so good.

Hollywood has been licking its chops over the prospect of a record summer boxoffice, and the industry remains on track for just that midway into the season's third month. The reason is simple, if unsexy: Although several films have underperformed, nothing has gone catastrophically wrong.

"There haven't been any train wrecks, even though most summers seem to have one," one grateful studio executive says.

That's partly because the industry has made a fine art of balancing the U.S. and global appeal of its films.

In a notable misfire, Warner Bros.' pricey sci-fi actioner "Terminator Salvation" topped out at $123 million domestically, but foreign rights-holder Sony did significantly better with $228 million. Similarly, Sony's "Angels & Demons" fetched a nifty $342 million overseas to bail out the Tom Hanks starrer, which underwhelmed domestically with $131 million.

Still, toss in such star-studded underachievers as Sony's Denzel Washington-John Travolta thriller "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" ($62 million) and some have begun to blame high-profile, highly paid casts for their films' fates.

Such analysis appears hasty. Certainly some stars didn't shine, but to say they hurt their films at the box office seems silly.

The Jack Black vehicle "Year One," for instance, largely was a victim of its release slot: two weeks after the unsuccessful -- and awkwardly similar -- comedy "Land of the Lost" and a week before box office behemoth "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."

"Lost" failed to connect less because of star Will Ferrell's dimmed appeal -- though more than a couple of critics have suggested an image rethink -- but rather its neither-fish-nor-foul concept. A PG-13 rating for crude language and a few drug references turned off too many family moviegoers, and a big-screen adaptation of a whimsically cheesy 1970s children's TV series never was going to be an easy sell with contemporary teens.

Meanwhile, Ben Stiller continues to enjoy a blessed career. Critics dismissed his sequel, "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," but it has rung up a more-than-respectable $171 million domestically and an outsized $207 million abroad through last weekend -- no mean feat for a comedy.

As for a one-time A-lister who has taken an undeniable bruising of late, that would be Eddie Murphy. His family comedy "Imagine That," a mere $15 million domestic grosser, almost was as big an embarrassment for Paramount as his fantasy comedy "Meet Dave" was for Fox last year.

But plenty has gone right in the summer -- so much, in fact, that the season remains on track to notch a box office record when final grosses are tallied after Labor Day in early September. Nielsen EDI data show industry grosses up 5% compared with a year ago, despite the summer featuring one fewer weekend because of calendar fluctuations.

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