Summer Movie Season’s Magic #? $4.5 Bil

To movie industry heathens like you and me, we’ll always remember where we were when Mel Gibson made his drunken anti-Semitic tirade, when Tom Cruise got fired by old coot Sumner Redstone, and when the 2007 Summer Movie Season made $4.5 billion. That’s how much I’m told box office gurus predict the mega-blockbusters about to flood U.S. mega-plexes from May through August will gross, becoming the highest summer on record. And many of the movies look to be not completely unwatchable. All of a sudden, we’re feeling the spirit of The Blockbusters Cometh. Starting this Friday, we’ll be living in a Promised Movieland: the popcorn will seem that much fresher, the seats that much plusher, the air conditioning that much chillier, the audience that much quieter. Now bow your heads and pray that the moronic moguls, and the overindulged directors, and the megalomaniac actors don’t louse it up and lead us back into the desert, aka the Summer of 2005 when the movies stunk and the audiences stayed away. Just to be safe, I’ll perform a few exorcisms since the devil is working overtime in Hollywood.

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Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.