Mid-Summer Movie Report Card

For those of you who don't know, the summer works like this in Hollywood: Memorial Day kicks off the season, Independence Day marks the middle and Labor Day is the other book end. As Wednesday, July 4th marks the mid-point, the LA Times decided to evaluate the summer so far to see what lessons can be learned from the success of certain genres. It's a little like trying to talk to a patient about avoiding cholesterol while he's in the middle of having a triple bypass, but here's the pocket version of their conventional wisdom:

For all the talk of franchise fatigue, the "threequels" have all performed quite well (Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, Shrek the Third, Ocean's Thirteen), which is why we can all expect "fourquels" for 2009.

With comedies, big budegets simply do not equal big laughs. Just ask Universal, which invested between $175-200 million plus to make Evan Almighty, which lost even more steam (dropping 50%) at the box office this weekend.

In horror, torture seems to have gone from trend-setting to gauche, which is bad news for Captivity, out July 13th. But traditional suspense may be coming back into fashion, as we saw with 1408, which recently opened with a strong $20 million.

We haven't seen a lot of action this summer, but Live Free and Die Hard's $33.1 million opening has shown that there's a hunger for the genre. Expect Transformers (out today) to do big business this week, and The Bourne Ultimatum (other threequel) to find an audience on Aug. 3.

Serious drama as counter programming to popcorn fare? Not working. Despite early Oscar talk, Angelina Jolie's A Mighty Heart has made around $5 million at the box office and Evening with Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Toni Collette and Vanessa Redgrave isn't tracking well.