$4 Billion Summer Box Office An Impossibility?

Friday is the mid-point of the summer season and it's a good time to check the pulse of overall box office. Will Hollywood be able to set that $4 billion record? It's looking more and more doubtful. Early season blockbusters Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribean: At World's End and Shrek the Third all performed within the range of expectations, but probably won't match the final tallies of the franchises' second installments. And big-ticket sequels like Ocean's Thirteen and Evan Almighty haven't done the same kind of business.

Put part of the blame on the crowded market place, where movies with "legs" are becoming a things of the past. U.S. and Canadian domestic ticket sales stand at $1.6 billion, up 3.68 percent from 2006, according to Rutuers, which quotes Boxofficemojo.com President Brandon Gray as saying he believes that to get to $4 billion by end of August, summer ticket sales would have to reach nearly $2 billion by the end of this week. But some are still holding out hope. Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille, Fox's Live Free or Die Hard and The Simpsons Movie, DreamWork's Transformers, Warner Bros. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Universal's The Bourne Ultimatum could all do big business. Ticket sales for summer 2006 totaled $3.85 billion.