Summer’s over.

Sorry about that folks, but the last  tent(ish)pole (GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra) has unfurled and District 9 is picking up the crumbs before we head into the annual dumping ground, whoops, sorry, month of September. Arthounds are fixated on the Venice slate; awards punters are peering at the Toronto catalogue.

 

Who’s the daddy?

There’s still some counting to be done, but the USheavyweight champion of summer 2009 is…Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen– a whopping $396m, up from the original’s $376m tally in 2007 and more than a clear $100m over its nearest rival…

In at No 2 - Up, with $288m domestic. (This is still out on staggered release with the major international territories yet to open - UK, Germany, Japan. They will hope to do better than France, though, which saw a meagre $21m).

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Princeis the third-highest-domestic grosser with $284m, $8m shy of its predecessor Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Next up: The Hangover, with a stunning $266m. Then Star Trek, the summer’s successful franchise reboot, rounds out the top five with $255m.

(Just bubbling under: Monsters Vs Aliens, $198.2m, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, with $191m domestic).

 

We are the world.

But this was a summer in which world domination counted the most as the studios looked to set overseas records for global smashes.

The highest-grossing film internationallyin summer 2009 thus far is Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with a staggering $601m outside the US.

But that doesn’t get you the global crown, which goes to Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince at $578m for an overall global tally of $862m to date.

(But, with two titles still to go, the Hogwarts franchise weakened slightly over Harry Potter/Phoenix, which took $938m worldwide. Tallies were down internationally: the UK dropped from $101m to $74; Japan fell by $10m to $70m, and Germany and France slid a little).

Transformersweighed in second globally with $427m (an improvement over the original Transformers 2007 gross of $376m) to an overall tally of $824m (over $695m). The machines now hold records in many Asian markets, including China.

And Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is in third position for worldwide grosses with a stunning $792m, making it the highest-grossing animation of all time.

 

The World saves Hollywood!

Demonstrating the power of international, some films owe their health to the foreign marketplace. Angels and Demons only took $133m domestic, but foreign raised it by $350.4m for a very nice tally of $483m (still nothing on The Da Vinci Code’s whopping $758m global tally in 2006).

Terminator Salvationtook $125m in the US, but raised that by $245m internationally for a global total of $370m.

And X-Men Origins: Wolverine took a healthy $179.8m domestic, but raised that by $183m international for a tally of $363m (still down around $100m from 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand).

 

Other healthy performers internationally included Star Trek with $126m (for $382m worldwide); Monsters Vs Aliens, $180m (for $378m worldwide), and The Hangover again with $136m internationally for $403m worldwide.

 

Report card: could do better

At $172m worldwide, Public Enemies, which looked fantastic on paper – Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Michael Mann – must have been a commercial disappointment to all involved and the critics didn’t love it either. A low-ish domestic tally of $96m was healthier than its worldwide take of $75.7m, however.

Land of the Lostwon’t be top of Will Ferrell’s CV with $50m domestic, or Year One for Jack Black with $53.5m. I Love You Beth Cooper was sadly John Hughes’ last film

Much has been written about Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno being a flop – but was it really? $60m in the US, $87m in foreign brought it to $147m – nowhere near Borat’s global tally of $261m, but a gross any 18/R-rated film would be happy with.