Superbad stayed on top of weekend box office for the second weekend and summer box office topped $4 billion for the first time ever. According to AP:
Overall, Hollywood crossed the $4 billion mark for the summer season. The figure topped the $3.95 billion set in 2004, according to box office tracker Media By Numbers.
Movies will have grossed about $4.15 billion by the time the season ends on Labor Day, up 8 percent from last summer, estimated Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers.
That’s an impressive feat by any measure, but must be tempered with the knowledge that part of that record haul is due to ticket price increases.
Factoring in higher admission prices, Media By Numbers estimated about 606 million movie tickets will have been sold this summer – a solid figure but only the sixth-best for modern Hollywood.
The best summer in recent times was in 2002, when 653.4 million tickets were sold.
Ticket prices do not account for the remarkable late summer surge, however. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the past weeks’s box office – not including the weekend – total boxoffice amounted to $204.1 million, up 24.6% over the comparable week last year. As of Thursday, the year-to-date boxoffice stood at $6.76 billion, up 7.8% over last year’s $6.27 billion.