..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

WEEK NINE
Up, Up & Away

We are getting into the meat of this summer. Cars, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Carribbean… all three are pretty sure to make the Top Five of the season and could actually be the Top Three of the season.

The trend has started moving towards more success in the middle of the summer. May used to be a lock to own at least two of the top three slots for the season. No longer. In 2004, it was one May, the July 4 movie (opening in June) and an early June. Last year, it was one May, one June (that early opening July 4 movie) and one July.

X2: X-Men United was #5 in its summer, with four of the five summer leaders opening in May. And this year, X-Men: The Last Stand looks to be the domestic leader for the month of May, settling in somewhere around $230 million domestic. There is a good chance that Cars and Monster House will cannibalize each other enough to keep one another from passing that number, but who knows? Regardless, it still looks like a Pirates/Superman one-two punch this summer.

But what got me rolling into this column was not the future of this summer, but the past. For all of the endless talk about Mission:Impossible 3, the truth is, there have only been two real wide-release flops in these first six weeks of summer; Just My Luck ($16 million) and Poseidon (should top out at about $60 million domestic).

Last year by this time, we saw the beginning of the end of Kingdom of Heaven, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, House of Wax, The Honeymooners, and Lords of Dogtown, not to mention borderline expectation flops Cinderella Man and Kicking and Screaming.

In 2004, the best box office summer ever, crash and burn Raising Helen, Soul Plane and New York Minute had arrived DOA, expensive flops The Stepford Wives and The Chronicles of Riddick had launched and Van Helsing kicked things off with a M:I3-like level (among the rational) of disappointment.

2003 was similar to this year with just The In-Laws, Down with Love, and Wrong Turn having wrecked, while four $200 million movies made happy box office music in May.

2002 was very ugly by this point in its calendar, with Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Enough, Bad Company, The New Guy, Deuces Wild and even smaller disappointments About a Boy, Hollywood Ending and Undercover Brother, plus the painful, but $100 million cracking The Sum of All Fears.

And 2001 had Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Evolution, What's the Worst That Could Happen?, and Angel Eyes, plus lower-than-expectations A Knight's Tale to kick things off.

Everyone who feels a lot better about Poseidon now step forward... not so fast, Warner Bros.

But seriously… not too bad. Fox has gotten past their Lindsay low point. And Superman is flying in for the WB.

Mission:Impossible 3 has passed $300 million worldwide, which is still not enough for it to ever be profitable, but the writedown shouldn't be more than $50 million, which is less than Tom Cruise's paycheck.

There has only been one summer with as many as three $70 million-plus openings (there have been 13 such summer openings in all movie history) and we have two already. There is little doubt that we should expect at least two more, breaking the record. We'll see how Cars does.

Over The Hedge is not an out of the park home run, but it has already tripled its $38.5 million opening.

The Break Up got smacked up, but still launched to $39 million.

American Haunting was released by a new company and managed more than six times the gross of Bloodrayne, the first experiment in launching a new genre distributor earlier this year.

And suddenly, what looked like some iffy moves are beginning to look like real rainmakers. And with studio marketing departments not wanting to fight off a June glut, July is still quite a mystery to the public… Monster House, Miami Vice, You, Me & Dupree, Lady In The Water, and Super Ex-Girlfriend. What is unique about all these pictures this summer is that none of them is a sequel. Miami Vice has a famous name, but that may be as much baggage as helium. The four major summer heroes right now look to be 3 sequels and 1 massive book-based, controversy-driven worldwide hit. But if just one or two more movies step up, it could be a truly huge summer.

Will anyone else move in the direction of this column? If Monster House opens to $50 million or more, it may become a trend. But even if it doesn't, reports of the demise of theatrical have been grossly exaggerated. And not just for the huge movies, but the trend in strong numbers for middle hits continues with films like The Break Up, Over The Hedge, and even The Omen, which will not likely match its 6/6/6 Tuesday on Friday, but could well end up with more than $50 million in the face of a lot of critical rage. Hey, maybe people just want to have fun.

The same is likely true of the upcoming Nacho Libre, which has somehow managed to pull a PG out of its ass - and when you see the movie, you will see that in this PG movie, pulling a rating out of your ass is firmly within the tone - as a Nickelodeon Film. The big surprise here is likely to be an Under-10 audience much bigger than anyone, other than perhaps Julia Pistor, had imagined possible.

Summer lovin', happened so fast.

This Week's Box Office Chart

THE BOX OFFICE CHARTS
Week Nine - 6/8
Week Seven - 5/25
Week Six- 5/18
Week Five - 5/11
Week Four - 5/4
Week Two - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

THE COLUMN
Week Nine - 6/8
Week Eight - 6/1
Week Seven - 5/25
Week Six - 5/18
Week Five- 5/11
Week Four - 5/4
Week Three - 4/27
Week Two - 4/20
Week One - 4/13

- Email David Poland