Record Summer at Box Office: Hollywood Snares $2.9 Billion

No matter how the numbers are calculated, the last summer of the millennium was a record-breaker, boosted over the top in the final five weeks because of the amazing strength of Disney’s “The Sixth Sense.”

According to Exhibitor Relations Co., whose definition bookends the season with Memorial Day and Labor Day, summer produced $2.9 billion in box office revenues and sold 598 million tickets (average price $4.85), an 11.5% gain over last year’s old record of $2.6 billion. What’s even more impressive, according to the tracking firm’s president, Paul Dergarabedian, is that the record $2.9 billion was achieved in 15 weeks versus 16 weeks last year when Memorial Day fell a week earlier.

As for the motion picture industry overall, the summer started even earlier. Variety tracked the season from the May 19 debut of “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” (17 weeks), calculating a $3.1 billion haul, 19% ahead of last year.

This summer was the first time that ticket sales rose in the double digits (14%) since 1993. That’s without the pre-summer hits “The Mummy” ($156 million) and “Entrapment” ($88 million), which did most of their business during the season.

The summer went out with a bang over Labor Day, posting an estimated $115 million in admissions, up 33% from last year and 20% better than the previous record set over the four-day holiday in 1997. The engine for the holiday was “The Sixth Sense,” which was the highest-grossing movie ever for the holiday with more than $29 million for the four days, up about 15% from the previous three-day weekend, bringing its total to $176.2 million.

The psychological thriller starring Bruce Willis took first place for the fifth weekend in a row and has grossed more than $20 million in each of those weekends, the first time any film has done that since “Titanic,” which still holds the record with 10 weekends at more than $20 million. For Disney, the only studio to have two of the top five summer releases, “The Sixth Sense” should end up as the company’s highest-grossing live-action film, and second overall only to the animated blockbuster “The Lion King,” which grossed $313 million domestically in 1994. Sixth is expected to ultimately gross around $275 million.

Industry pundits say this summer will be hard to beat. But that won’t stop the major studios from trying. Next summer’s release schedule is already being firmed up and will include such films as the “Mission Impossible” sequel starring Tom Cruise, the big-budget action adventure “Perfect Storm” starring George Clooney, Clint Eastwood’s “Space Cowboys,” Disney’s super-expensive animated spectacular “Dinosaurs” and the film version of a popular comic, the Jim Carrey-Farrelly brothers comedy “Me, Myself and Irene” from Fox.

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The Summer’s Five Top-Grossing Movies

May 19 through Sept. 6

1. “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace”: $421 million

2. “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”: $205 million

3. “The Sixth Sense”: $176 million

4. “Tarzan”: $167 million

5. “Big Daddy”: $161 million

Source: Exhibitor Relations Co.