HBO: Hollywood Box Office this summer

Hollywood - The summer film run at the box office proved the studios still have what it takes in star power to draw in movie buffs when it comes to filling theater seats after the summer film season, raking in a record $4 billion for the studios.

The summer's box office take beat the last season record of $3.95 billion set three year's ago.

The studios brought out highly-touted films every week, including through August which is usually a low period for box office returns at the end of the summer film season.

Four sequels also set records, bringing in $300 million each in box office returns; "Spider Man", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Shrek" and "Harry Potter". Movie pundits couldn't figure out whether the release of the "Harry Potter" film this summer would have done better or worse at the box office when the final book in the series made headlines worldwide and was released at the same time as the latest movie, leaving one more film to be produced for the Potter sequel of sequels.

Coming up close behind the four record sequels this summer was "Transformers", which is still at the box office this Labor Day weekend and its sequel, "Transformers 2" is already on the drawing board.

Another hot sequel this summer was "The Bourne Ultimatum", which grossed $70 million at the box office its first week, outperforming all of the other "Bourne" films before it. So far the Bourne film has grossed $185 at the box office.

Two other films did better than most expected with "Knocked Up" grossing $147 million at the box office this summer and the comedy is still going strong. Also, the teen summer comedy "Superbad" has been holding its own in the No. 1 slot at the box office for the second week in a row.

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