Before each summer, Hollywood crows about how its terrific upcoming movies are sure to reach new heights at the box-office
This year, not so much. Sure, executives will talk a blue streak about individual films and slates, and as always there are some potential blockbusters set to unspool.
But this is the first summer in some time in which firm predictions of box-office records are harder to find than pure motives in a mob movie. And a new high in admissions? Fuhgeddaboudit.
This time, the rhetoric is less Barnum & Bailey and more Alan Greenspan as major studio executives attempt to guard against any irrational exuberance over seasonal prospects.
"By definition, last summer offers a tough comparison because there were four movies that made more than $300 million," Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore says. "It's unlikely there will be four this year, but the question is how many $200 million movies will there be?"
Among the potential highfliers: Paramount's Iron Man (May 2), Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (May 16), Paramount's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22), Warner Bros.' Get Smart (June 20), Sony's Hancock (July 2) and Warners' The Dark Knight (July 18).

Three of those six films are sequels, and a fourth - Get Smart -boasts built-in audience awareness from its small-screen fame. But with just seven sequels overall compared with 13 last summer, the industry's seasonal prospects swing in large part on whether any original releases meet their studios' fervent prerelease hopes.
Among original titles, two of the surest bets, bracketing the month of June, come in the form of brand-name animation: Paramount's release of DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda on June 6 and Disney's June 27 launch of Pixar's Wall-E.
Box-office potential is only that, and many an executive ulcer will churn until the studios' biggest event films actually hit the marketplace. One saving grace might be that in an era when 4,000-plus playdates is now de rigueur for tentpole releases, executives know early in their first weekend of release whether to freshen their resumes or fashion pitches for fat raises.

Last summer, seasonal box- office - running from the first weekend in May to Labour Day -- totalled a record $4.16 billion, the first $4 billion-plus summer ever. This summer, the industry consensus predicts that a new revenue high is unlikely, so perhaps a more realistic target would be getting north of $4 billion for the second time.
As for theatre admissions, the industry hasn't seen a record set for summer ticket sales since 2003. Price inflation has accounted for revenue records set since then, so it will be even tougher to beat last year's mark of 609.2 million admissions.
Regardless of how the industry box-office pans out this summer, the season arrives with the usual array of haves and have-nots.

New Line belongs, quite literally, in the latter category, having recently lost control of its film distribution to corporate sibling Warners. But even before it took on New Line's lineup, which includes the feature film version of Sex and the City (May 30) and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D (July 11), Warners already was sitting pretty.
It boasts a big sequel in the Christian Bale-led Batman sequel Dark Knight and a proven gals-night-out pleasure in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 (August 8). Pants, of course, won't gross anything close to the Batman sequel, but it represents a zero-risk payout from the movie-sequel ATM machine.
Still, the studio's real slate test lies with two adaptations of 1960s TV shows: Get Smart and the PG live-action film Speed Racer (May 9), starring Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) in the title role.

"They're very different, but both have reached mass audiences and were strong enough television shows that they lasted for years," Warner Bros. distribution president Dan Fellman says.
Fellman also believes that the studio's animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars (August 15) should gross more than $100 million.
Universal also appears relatively well-stocked with good-looking summer merchandise.
"It's such a diverse variety of really commercial and really great films," Universal chairman Marc Shmuger says. "There are unknown properties, new titles, established brands. But they are all really strong, committed, commercial films with real defined audiences."

Universal has a pair of sequels, with The Incredible Hulk (June 13) considered more of a remake. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (July 11), from genre fan favourite Guillermo del Toro, should outperform the first Hellboy, and the threequel The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (August 1) would surprise only by greatly underperforming the franchise's first two big hits. Universal's "unknown" titles also could include a couple of possible over achievers.
Wanted- an assassin thriller starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy set for June 27 -- drew possibly the biggest reaction during Universal's presentation at the movie theatre industry's ShoWest confab in Las Vegas last month. And Mamma Mia! (July 18) is going to be either one of the summer's breakout surprises, a la last summer's Hairspray, or a quick entry in the category of Musicals that didn't work. But most feel the former is more likely.

Some believe that Universal's summer prospects are the hardest to project, with the potential of big upside if everything works and the chance for big disappointment if too much goes awry.
Paramount – which topped summer '07 tallies on the strength of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek the Third and the DreamWorks/Paramount co-productionTransformers - appears locked into a trio of near sure-shots.
Besides the Indiana Jones sequel and Marvel Studios' Iron Man,Paramount's summer plans include Panda, one of Hollywood's four animated features getting wide release this summer. Paramount also figures in something of a smackdown June 20, when its Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru goes up against Get Smart.

Disney, which limits its bets, should have a relatively risk-free summer, featuring two sure hits in Narnia and Wall-E.
"It's always nice when at least on paper it looks like you've got the goods," Disney distribution president Chuck Viane says. "Then it's just a matter of going out there and performing."
Fox's summer slate seems a bit light - some will read that as risk-averse - but executives insist that releases including the Mark Wahlberg starrer The Happening (June 13), from tall-tale spinner M. Night Shyamalan and a still-untitled X-Files sequel (July 25) hold lucrative possibilities.

"What we have is a very, very solid slate that has something for everybody," Fox distribution president Bruce Snyder says.
At Sony, the emphasis is on star power. Besides the Will Smith vehicle Hancock, destined to dominate the Fourth of July holiday, Sony has the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan (June 6), a Will Ferrell-John C. Reilly pairing in Step Brothers (July 25) and the Seth Rogen-toplined Pineapple Express (August 8).
"I don't think you can ever have too much comedy in the summer," Sony Pictures Entertainment vice chairman Jeff Blake says. "Last summer, everybody was saying, 'Where's the comedy?' This time some people are saying there's too much, but I don't see why they all wouldn't work."