Movie grosses were up, tickets were down, minds were blown and sniffles unavoidable as Andy packed for college and sent Woody, Buzz, Jessie and pals into a toy tizzy.
The books closed Monday on summer 2010, and it was a season when "Toy Story 3" leapfrogged to the No. 1 spot for the year, Sylvester Stallone muscled past "The A-Team" and the top 10 summer movies were rated G, PG or PG-13.
Projected grosses for the first weekend in May through Labor Day are a record $4.35billion - up 2.35 percent from 2009 - hollywood.com reports. That is because of higher ticket prices, now averaging $7.88 rather than the $7.50 of 2009.
On the attendance side of the ledger, hollywood.com projects an estimated 552 million tickets sold - a drop from almost 567 million in summer 2009.
After all, "Just Wright" might be just right for a Redbox rental, and moviegoers burned by "MacGruber"weren't eager to shell out more money for, say, "Jonah Hex" or to watch Charlie St. Cloud play catch with his dead brother. Sorry, Zac Efron.
Nor were people willing to pay $3 to $5 more to see a film in 3-D, choosing instead to pay the premium for IMAX tickets.
"The biggest surprise is though the top movie was a 3-D movie, that 3-D wasn't a bigger factor this summer," box-office expert Paul Dergarabedian said. "The immersive, subtle 3-D experience is great for certain movies, but when you're spending that extra three or four bucks on a ticket, some people want that in-your-face 3-D experience - I want to know I'm watching 3-D if I'm paying for it."
E-word of mouth
Many movies also suffered from opinions winging around in Cyberspace via Twitter, Facebook and other social networks that compressed the thumbs-up or -down timeline. "It used to be that word of mouth could either hurt or help your film within a matter of days or a week," Dergarabedian says. "Now, word of mouth, because of social networking, can hurt or help your movie within a matter of hours."
The box-office analyst sees 2010 as a transitional year, with summer 2011 promising (many in 3-D) "Thor," "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "X-Men: First Class," "Green Lantern," "Cars 2," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II," "Captain America: The First Avenger" and "Spy Kids 4."
And though we may never see the likes again of summer 2002, when more than 653million tickets were sold to such blockbusters as "Spider-Man" and "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," Dergarabedian says that 2012 could come close.
He points to the promise of "The Avengers," "Men in Black III," a "Star Trek" sequel, a Spider-Man reboot with Andrew Garfield, and a third Batman picture.
