3 A MAGIC NUMBER AT BOX OFFICE SPIDER-MAN, SHREK PRODUCE BIG PROFITS.

Byline: GREG HERNANDEZ

Staff Writer

Time to update the record books.

After headlining its most successful Labor Day weekend ever, Hollywood closed the curtain Monday on a $4.184 billion summer -- the highest-grossing in history.

From the summer's kick-off blockbuster "Spider-Man 3" to current No. 1 "Halloween," the season's top hits ran the gamut from action ("Transformers") to animation ("The Simpsons Movie") to comedy ("Knocked Up") to a musical ("Hairspray"). Revenue topped the previous high of $3.95 billion earned in 2004.

"Hollywood obviously tapped into what audiences wanted this summer as opposed to a couple of years ago when nothing really worked," said box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. "They definitely got it right with records broken and benchmarks hit."

"Spider-Man 3" was the top-grosser ($336.5 million) and was joined in the $300 million-plus club by "Shrek the Third," "Transformers" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" stood at $286.8 million as of Monday and could also reach that rarified box office air.

Over Labor Day weekend, both "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Ratatouille" crossed $200 million.

In all, 15 films have crossed the $100 million mark domestically, with "Superbad" and "Evan Almighty" on the verge of doing so. They include the sequels "Rush Hour 3," "Live Free or Die Hard," "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" and "Ocean's Thirteen".

"The sequels definitely worked," Dergarabedian said of a summer that had 14 sequels, second only to the record 15 from summer of 2003.

The month of August is usually the dog days of the summer for the movie industry, but studios kept up the heat with "Bourne," "Superbad" and "Rush Hour 3." Then "Halloween" achieved a record Labor Day weekend opening of $30.6 million, besting the previous high set by "Transporter 2" two years ago by more than $10 million.

"Basically, we don't see these kinds of numbers at the tail end of summer," said Gitesh Pandya, editor of the Web site BoxOfficeGuru.com. "'Halloween' opened much higher than expected and there were a lot of strong holdovers, too."

So what was the key to the season's success?

Twentieth Century Fox distribution head Bruce Snyder, whose studio released "Fantastic Four," "Die Hard" and "Simpsons," attributes it to several factors.

"You've got the combination of blockbusters to begin with, the original comedies that crackled, along with sequels to long-dormant franchises all coming together and doing what you hoped they would do," Snyder said. "I hope we can do it again."

While the revenue record is cause for celebration, it must be noted that it was only the fifth-biggest summer in terms of actual attendance with 610,802,920 tickets sold. The average ticket cost $6.85.

The attendance record still belongs to 2002, the summer of the first "Spider-Man" as well as "Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones." That year, 653,448,276 tickets were sold at an average price of $5.80.

The official 18-week summer season kicks off the first week of May and ends on Labor Day.

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Summer's Top Ten

SOURCE: Media By Numbers