2012 Summer Movie wrap-up: The Avengers and the art house save an otherwise mediocre summer movie season.

This is actually a pretty simple summer movie season to analyze and/or dissect.  In short, the expected mega-blockbusters were indeed mostly mega-blockbusters, the expected middle-of-the-road hits were just that, while the films pegged most likely to flop or at least financially disappoint did just that.   If you had polled pundits at the beginning of the summer over the top four films of summer 2012, you they probably would have told you some combination of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Brave.  And three of those films did pretty much what should have been realistically expected of them.  The core artistic pattern of summer 2012 was pretty simple: Most of the mainstream entries, even the ones expected to soar, ended up being artistically disappointing while the indie scene was on fire all season long.  Speaking financially, audiences embraced most of the major art-house films while being just a little pickier when it came to mainstream fare.  But the biggest news of summer 2012 was the general success of old-school movies, as a number of original properties and/or star vehicles proved quite profitable.  I've written extensively elsewhere about the slow and steady return of the 'movie' so I won't dwell on that here (essay and essay).  But when Magic Mike is a smash hit while a Total Recall remake is a money loser, one hopes that the studios will take note and perhaps learn a lesson different than "Let's make a sequel to Magic Mike!".

Thursday box office: Katy Perry: Part of Me 3D debuts with $3m while The Amazing Spider-Man now sits with $75m.

So The Amazing Spider-Man heads into the Fri-Sun weekend with $75 million after three days.  There is little to speculate at this point.  All relevant mathematical precedents (Transformers, Transformers 3, Spider-Man 2, War of the Worlds, etc.) point to The Amazing Spider-Man ending its six-day weekend with around $140 million.  I'll discuss whether that's good or bad come Sunday (it's a little complicated), but for now the film is no outright flop and probably will encourage other studios to consider rebooting their cherished properties sooner rather than later.  Alas... Anyway, the first day for Paramount's 3D musical documentary, Katy Perry: Part of Me, earned $3.1 million today.  That's obviously closer to the $4.9 million that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience earned on its opening day (a Friday, natch) as opposed to the $12 million that Justin Bieber: Never Say Never earned over its debut Friday.  Even if the Katy Perry espionage thriller ends up closer to the $11 million that Glee 3D grossed versus the $72 million finishes of Michael Jackson: This Is It and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, the film cost just $12 million to make and may-well become a popular slumber-party rental for the next year or so.  I make no promises about updating in regards to Friday numbers, but I'll have the full analysis for Peter, Katy, and Ollie (Stone) come Sunday.

Scott Mendelson