The Blockbusters Weren't
　　In May, the first month of blockbuster summer movies, Hollywood Bath toys brought out its big guns - sequels to Iron Man, Shrek and Sex and the City, plus the pricey action-adventures Robin wedding gowns Hood and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - and most of them turned out to be popguns.
　　The month's total take was 11% below May 2009's in prom dresses revenue and 19% down in attendance. Then last weekend, four more films opened: Get Him to the Greek, Killers, Marmaduke and Splice. They all "underperformed," in industry parlance, marking the first Fleece blankets June weekend in five years that no new movie earned $20 million at the box office. The weekend gross dropped a parlous 28% from the same frame last year, despite a hefty rise in ticket prices.
　　All through the Great Recession, Hollywood electric meter enjoyed a relative boom. Last year the domestic box office - the revenue from movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada - exceeded $10 billion for the first time ever. Now the door mat numbers look anorexic, big-budget films are flopping left and right, and studio bosses have begun wondering what has gone so horribly wrong.
　　Is the recent downturn a blip in the business, or a harbinger CONNECTORS of the end of America's long love affair with paying to see picture shows? Have audiences suddenly decided, "Moviegoing - that's so 2009"?
　　Ahh, 2009. Studio bosses stroke their three-day nike air max bearded chins and sigh at the memory of that wonderful year. The summer season opened with a predictably profitable May menu of remakes Star die casting Trek sequels Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, prequels X-Men Origins Wolverine and Pixars .
　　Making money from familiar franchises is ray ban sunglasses pleasing to Hollywood but not unexpected. Then, in early June, came the comedy smash The Hangover, which opened to $45 million and eventually took in $277 million on a $35 million budget.
　　For the rest of 2009, the hits just kept on coming, often in 4gb mp3 player surprise packages: a South African sci-fi parable (District 9), a strong-woman sports drama (The Blind Side) and mobile phone for sale an indie horror film (Paranormal Activity) that earned $150 million worldwide - 10,000 times its $15,000 budget. All those pictures, plus Avatar.
　　The gold rush continued through the first quarter of 2010, when James door mat Cameron's eco-epic racked up most of its $749 million domestic take, the highest in film history. As soon as the Avatar avalanche abated, Tim Burton's Alice in evening dresses Wonderland stormed in and soon joined Avatar as one of just six films to have earned more than $1 billion worldwide; for the first time ever, two films had crossed that magic threshold in the same year.