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With Labor Day in our rearview mirrors, we bid adieu to the summer season.  Summer, as moviegoing audiences are well aware, is the time when studios unleash their big-budget epics on our willing yet ill-equipped eyes and ears in the hopes of claiming the box office crown.  On the heels of films such as The Dark Knight ($533 million), Iron Man ($318 million) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($317 million), 2008 broke the summer box office record despite statistics that showed movie theater attendance had dropped.  Now, with summer 2009 behind us and all the tallies in, it turns out that the summer box office record has been broken yet again, with a final sum of $4.35 billion, or 5% ahead of 2008.

The big winner for summer 2009 was Warner Bros. with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($296 million) and The Hangover ($270 million) accounting for 59% of the entire studio's summer gross.  With sequels for both films planned for summer 2011, Warners can be sure to expect some good mojo in the future.

Paramount was the runner-up, though with only 9 releases, there's no cause for embarrassment.  Well, maybe there is, considering a little under half of that revenue - $400.7 million - was generated by the abysmal Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. 

3D movies, as shown by The Final Destination taking the box office for the second week in a row, have been wildly successful in 2009 as well, primarily due to the increased ticket price.  Third place Fox was boosted by Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ($193 million) while fourth place Disney was helped by Up ($290 million) and G-Force ($115 million).

Universal, with under-performing titles such as Funny People, Public Enemies and Land of the Lost finished a distant sixth.  The ailing Weinstein Company led all indie studios with $122 million, but unfortunately, most of that is courtesy of Inglourious Basterds at $95.1 million.

The year to date box office gross currently sits around $7.4 billion, or 8.1% ahead of the same point last year.