“Warners to take summer crown”

If it’s Labor Day weekend, it’s time to crown the summer box office winners. And this year’s winning studio is — again — no surprise:

Winning summer boxoffice crowns has become habit-forming at Warner Bros.
 
Hollywood’s summer ends Labor Day, but already it’s clear that Warners again will top distributor market-share rankings with $957 million in domestic grosses since the season began May 1, according to Nielsen EDI.

The studio’s seasonal performance has yielded an industry-best market share of 23%. Paramount copped the season’s silver medal with $874 million so far and a 21% share; Disney is third with $604 million and 15%.

In fact, a record summer:

All told, summer boxoffice will finish north of summer 2007’s record $4.16 billion when receipts are calculated through Labor Day. But with 3D upcharges driving a big rise in average ticket prices, there’s scant chance of beating summer 2004’s admissions record of 642 million tickets sold after accounting for inflation.

But when there are winners, there always losers:

Rounding out domestic rankings among the major studios, Universal ($343 million; 8%) suffered a series of disappointments during the summer. Its June 5 opener “Land of the Lost” was produced for an estimated $100 million but struggled to register $50 million domestically.

“It was a very disappointing summer for us,” Universal marketing and distribution president Adam Fogelson says. “We are all linking arms and doing everything we can to course-correct and to make sure we never have another summer like this.”

Will Ferrell + Jurassic Park? Must have sounded good in the room. Not so good now.

And that’s why studio execs hate to say “yes” to a project — because if it bombs, they get hit with the shrapnel.

That’s also why they green light sequels, remakes, and movies based on pre-branded commodities — anything they can do to minimize the risk and their exposure.

One of the reasons for such a crap spec market right now.

But after the Labor Day weekend, things will heat up… right?

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