It seems the recession has been good to the movie business. Ever since the bottom fell out of the economy, movie theatres have filled up and scored some of their biggest grosses ever. It's now been anounced that even though the official summer box office session hasn't ended yet, it's already beaten the record for the biggest grossing summer ever. The previous biggest grosser was 2007, when $4.16 billion was taken at US cinemas from May to early Septmber, but by the end of Sunday, 2009 had already outdone that, with $4.17 million.
The official summer session ends with the four-day Labor Day weekend this week, which is expected to add another $100 million to the total, putting 2009 about 3% ahead of any previous summer (although when inflation is taken into account, more tickets were probably sold in 2007).
Although there hasn't been a gargantuan $400 million grossing movie like The Dark Knight, 2009 has seen good performances from a large number of films, with five movies (Transformers 2, Harry Potter 6, Up, The Hangover, and Star Trek) all taking more than $250 million, a feat that only three films managed in the whole of last year.
With the spring box office also having set records in terms of both attendance and gross, 2009 is set to become a truly massive year for the movies, with some suggesting there's a possibility this will be the first year ever that movies will gross more than $10 billion at the US box office, although there'll need to be a few more big movies for it to manange that.