The Biggest Box-Office Summer Ever: A Recap

It's the last week of summer at the movies, and thanks to late assists from The Final Destination and Inglourious Basterds, 2009 will be the biggest summer ever at the box office. But the cash came from surprising sources: typically golden stars and directors notched major flops this year, while up-and-comers pulled off huge coups. To recap at season's end, we've put some of summer's biggest box-office losers and winners below, along with the worldwide gross of their movie (or movies, as the case may be).

The Losers

Sacha Baron Cohen, $137 million. Not exactly chump change, but the British comedian's was a huge flop compared to tonal prequel Borat. The highly publicized, widely distributed film about an Austrian fame seeker pulled in a paltry $11,000 per theater in its U.S. opening weekend, compared with the nearly $32,000 per theater average of Borat. Mere days after it opened, sank to the No. 4 spot, never to be seen at the top again.

Cameron Diaz, $69 million. Her much-heralded change of pace as the battle-worn mother in My Sister's Keeper scraped together just over half the cash that director Nick Cassavetes's last tearjerker (The Notebook, $116 million) pulled in. Pass the Kleenex to Diaz.

Will Ferrell, $62 million. June'sLand of the Lost was conceived as a vehicle for the star comedian, but it was one of the most gigantic flops of the summer. (By way of comparison, Ferrell's 2004 pic Anchorman made more than $90 million.) Universal gambled on Ferrell's brand cachet and little else to drive audiences, but perhaps they were skittish after the pic generated the summer's most poisonous reviews. Per Peter Keough of The Boston Phoenix, the movie was "a pot of ersatz dinosaur piss." Ouch!

Judd Apatow, $53 million. The director saw huge commercial success with Knocked Up ($219 million) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin ($177 million), but audiences failed to fall for his more sensitive, slow-paced and nuanced comedy, Funny People. Stacked with stars and critically defended though it was, the movie netted only two thirds of its production budget.

Michelle Pfeiffer, $6 million. Her smoldering return to cinema as a corsetted Mrs. Robinson type couldn't charm the cash out of our wallets. Despite 2009 being the Summer of Stuff Blowing Up (G.I. Joe, Transformers 2, Angels & Demons, The Final Destination), Pfeiffer's turn in the arthouse-y Chéri didn't appeal as alternative fare.

And now, drumroll, for ...

The Winners!

Harry Potter, $896 million. I scream, you scream, we all screamed for Potter this summer. The movie that ended 24 long months of Potter deprivation, Half-Blood Prince was like a pint of Ben & Jerry's after a stint on Master Cleanse: sweet relief. Massive midnight sales propelled the film's success—showing that Potter fans, though getting older, are no less loyal. And thanks to this sixth installment, the Potter series surpassed Bond as the top domestic franchise.

Michael Bay, $828 million. Brand Bay is famous for barnside-broad dialogue and cornea-searing explosions, and sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was lacking in neither. (Why would it be? A now-legendary Forbes profile of the director from mid-June detailed how that foolproof formula netted Bay $2.6 billion—before Transformers 2.) The critically reviled Fallen, an archetypal Bay film in every way (except for maybe its handsome hero's shattered fingers), was one of the biggest hits of the year.

Bradley Cooper, $592 million. Formerly known as "Oh, yeah, that guy in Wedding Crashers," now regularly on the covers of your supermarket tabloids. Tall, tan, and handsome, Cooper was turned into a leading man and star almost overnight, thanks to the cash his slew of movies (The Hangover, He's Just Not That Into You and this week's All About Steve) reeled in this season. The purported love triangle with Jennifer Aniston and Renée Zellweger doesn't hurt his fame quotient.

Zach Galifianakis, $583 million. He was drop-kicked out of obscurity via June's The Hangover and cemented as a mainstream star with July's G-Force, and he's on to a slew of new projects opposite Hollywood's biggest stars that will easily, easily make him the Vince Vaughn of the decade's turn. Don't believe us? The numbers say it all: neither The Hangover nor G-Force were expected to do as well as they did (The Hangover surpassed longtime recordholder Beverly Hills Cop as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time), and the success of both was largely pinned on the screwball pranks of Galifianakis. Of all the beneficiaries of summer's box-office boon, we're happiest for this ruddy Comedian of Comedy.

Pixar, $414 million. Ha! Saying a Pixar pic won the summer is like saying the sky is blue—duh. But with director Pete Docter's Up, a delicate stunner about an old guy and a Boy Scout, the animation studio proved its first foray into 3-D high jinks could be downright elegiac.

J. J. Abrams, $383 million. Incredibly, May's Star Trek reboot managed to both mollify the diehard devotees and whet the appetite of franchise foreigners, something neither group thought was possible. (Maybe it was the two Spocks?) Chalk it up to the Lost creator's light, fresh touch in the Paramount flick, which generated intense word-of-mouth buzz and had sustained high performance throughout summer's first half.