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Just 24 months ago, the sky was falling. With box office down, Hollywood's summer ended in a torrent of lament. Studios rushed to come up with an explanation, and some of the best minds acknowledged their greatest fears -- that in an age of iPods and cell-phone videos, there was a fundamental shift going on in the marketplace: Moviegoing, they concluded, was an outmoded form of entertainment.Shift to this summer, and box office is up 8% domestically, 20% overseas. For the first time, domestic summer B.O. passed the $4 billion mark.Since there was no shortage of theories about why box office fell, there are just as many hypotheses as to why moviegoing is up.To start, there is the simplest explanation."Box office was up this summer because the movies were good," says Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. He notes that when box office is down, people run around saying "woe is me or woe is that" and look for a diminished appetite for moviegoing. "All the people I talk to say it's really all about the product," Lynton says.Notes MPAA chairman Dan Glickman, "As Shakespeare said, 'The play is the thing.' As long as we offer good quality stories that people like and a comfortable place to see them, people will go to the movies."That theory, however, is just part of the picture. After surveying studio execs, producers, marketers and others, the big windfall of the summer of 2007 was about much more than just the movies.
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As in the days of Noah...
