NEW YORK (AP) – After a lackluster 2014 summer, Hollywood has bounced back with one of its best seasons ever. But the most surprising part of the turnaround is that superheroes aren’t the ones who saved the day.
Instead, Hollywood’s summer was led by a banner season from Universal Pictures, the lone major studio with nary a cape in its cupboard. With a record-setting $5.3 billion-plus in revenue so far this year, Universal has powered Hollywood to a near record summer with a diverse string of hits including the season’s top film “Jurassic World” ($1.6 billion worldwide), the top animated hit, “Minions,” and one of the most successful sequels, “Pitch Perfect 2.”
After the summer limps to a close over Labor Day weekend, the North American box office will have tallied about $4.4 billion in ticket receipts, according to box office data firm Rentrak. That’s second only to the record $4.75 billion summer of 2013 and an improvement of about 7.5 percent from last summer’s downturn.
And the superhero-less Universal led the way.
“It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s also an indication that we’re tapping audiences in different ways with the different kind of movies we’re releasing,” says Nick Carpou, distribution head for Universal. “I think our diverse slate doesn’t tend to tire people out.”