Hollywood Headed for Record Year
July 2, 2004 -- This summer in Hollywood, directors are yelling, "Lights! Camera! Action! Action! And more action!"
Spider-Man 2's record-breaking $40.5 million open on Wednesday proved when it comes to success, you can't mess with a winning formula. A big-budget action movie with eye-popping effects set amid story lines for all ages translates into Hollywood gold.
Tobey Maguire's second turn in the Spidey suit will likely join Shrek 2 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as the most watched movies of the summer, while helping studios claim a banner year at the box office.
Ticket sales before Spider-Man opened, at the midpoint of the summer, were already topping $1.7 billion for the year, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations. The number is in pace with 2002, which set a record for attendance level. The numbers are already speaking well and it's likely the ticket sales will keep going, as many of the most anticipated movies are still to come.
"The release pattern for this summer was very orderly, spread out pretty well. [We] still have King Arthur, The Village, Manchurian Candidate, Anchorman, I Robot, The Bourne Supremacy, Catwoman — and that's just July," said Paul Dergarabedian, Exhibitor's president.
Lone Female
Lurking behind Spidey is another comic-based star hoping for glory. Halle Berry goes on the prowl as a different sort of Catwoman.
"This film has no connection to Batman or Gotham City, so the character that Michelle Pfeiffer played has nothing to do with this," said Susannah Gora, associate editor at Premiere.
Berry plays a graphic designer at a cosmetics company who gains super powers (and a skintight catsuit), and a love interest in the form of a police detective played by Benjamin Bratt. She just may need some special skills to fend off the guys at the box office when the movie opens July 23.
