There were a lot of winners in the Summer of 2007; generating $4 billion in ticket sales can do that. Chris Neumer compiled the Ten Biggest Winners of the summer and presents them here:
10) Scott Prendergast Writer/director/actor Scott Prendergast makes this list for one reason and one reason alone: he was the driving force behind one of the summer's best movies, Kabluey. Attempting to describe the plot of Kabluey is almost a college writing exercise for would-be film critics. Suffice it to say, I can't do it. The movie involves absent military husbands, kids who may well be the spawns of Satan, a failing dot-com company, a lead who becomes a sort of superhero thanks to a job passing out fliers, and female love interest who enjoys dressing up as cheese. I don't know what the movie is about, but I've seen it twice and have enjoyed it immensely both times. Prendergast created his own brand of movie here and the results are fantastic.
9) Mature Actors Guess what the average age was of the lead actors in the top five grossing, live-action movies of the summer. 45.2 years old. (That's Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr., Sarah Jessica Parker, Harrison Ford and Christian Bale). In this world of tween-entertainment, youth-obsessed studio executives and action films marketed directly at college kids, the average age of the leading actor in the five biggest summer blockbusters was more than 45 years old. That's got to mean something.
I won't even get into the fact that the lead character in Wall • E was well over 700 years old.
8) Superman No character gained as much ground this summer as Superman. This was a particularly impressive feat given that Superman wasn't even in any movies that came out in 2008. However, given the strange nature of how Hollywood operates, this really shouldn't surprise anyone.
After Superman Returns' enormous flop two years ago, Warner Brothers tabled their Superman sequel and essentially put the character to bed. With The Dark Knight grossing more than $500 million this summer for them, the studio brain trust is suddenly looking at Superman (again) in a new light. The thinking is that maybe with an actual villain, some good screenwriting and a slightly darker focus, Superman could too be a supremely profitable entity for the company. I doubt it-there isn't much, if any, inner doubt or conflict that Clark Kent/Superman encounters; the brunt of the rising action consists of whether a given nemesis will be able to get his hands on some Kryptonite. My feelings aside, a sequel to Superman Returns has been green lit. In April, Superman was dead. In September, he's poised for a huge 2011 release. Not a bad summer at all.
7) Heath Ledger Oh sure, Ledger's dead and all, but he (and his marketing/publicity team*) pulled one of the best going-away parties that the world has ever seen. He went out on a high note, The Dark Knight, and, even though he wasn't close to being the best actor in the business, we’ll see his name enter conversations too numerous to count suggesting that he could have been the most talented ever. Barry Sanders has nothing on him. The expression is to, “live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Ledger did just that.
* This would be the group of people who managed to convince America that Ledger's last movie was in fact The Dark Knight. Given the nature of publicists, this information is, rather naturally, false. His actual last role is in the yet-to-be-released film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
6) Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis Dozens upon dozens of actors made more money for the work that they did that was released during the summer of' 08 than Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis. Hell, Harrison Ford may have topped a$50 million payday for his work on Indiana Jones. No one, and I mean no one, gained as much leverage as Nixon and Davis did for their turns in Sex and the City.
Nixon and Davis are competent and likeable actresses who got supremely lucky by being cast in the TV series Sex and the City. Since the cancellation of the show in 2004, Nixon and Davis accepted guest starring roles on Law & Order, made for TV movies and, when the stars aligned correctly, landed supporting roles for mid-major projects like The Shaggy Dog. Then came the Sex and the City movie and everything changed.
Reprising their roles as Miranda Hobbes and Charlotte York, respectively, Nixon and Davis found themselves as co-leads in one of the year's biggest motion pictures. Made for a reported $57.5 million*, Sex and the City went on to gross more than $400 million worldwide.
A sequel is coming. A studio doesn't make that much money and not try again. Here’s where Nixon and Davis reap their rewards. They can ask for just about anything they want and they will get it because the sequel will not go forward without them (people are still wondering what Kim Cattrall got for showing up in this movie). $10 million-a-piece might seem a high price to pay for two actresses whose names aren't Julia, Reese or Cameron, but Nixon and Davis are going to enter some very select company when they sign on the dotted line for the sequel.
5) Pixar Last year, the boys at Pixar made a mint with a movie about vermin. French vermin. This year, deciding that they were going to up the ante, they scored a major hit with another film, Wall • E, that featured a lead character voiced by a sound engineer (Ben Burtt) and a romantic lead voiced by a woman who'd had one previous screen credit to her name (Elissa Knight).
At least Ratatouille had somewhat normal looking humans in it. Wall • E had two robots, a cockroach and fat people. This is not the normal way to score a$200 million box office hit.
Next summer, from what I understand, Pixar is going release an 80-minute long game of Pong that someone recorded in 1979 and it's going to make $200+ million.
4) Ramin Djawadi "Who the hell is Ramin Djawadi?" I asked myself while looking at the credits to Iron Man. "He's the composer?" I stopped and thought about this for a moment. The composers who worked on the summer's biggest hits had mostly recognizable names, sounds and themes. The top ten movies were scored by Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, John Williams, John Powell, Thomas Newman, Powell (again), Zimmer (again), Craig Armstrong, Danny Elfman and our erstwhile friend, Ramin Djawadi. Which of those names seems like it doesn't quite belong with the rest of them? Ramin Djawadi.
Djawadi is another disciple of Zimmer's who has been unleashed on the world, ala Klaus Badelt, Mark Mancin, and Powell. Djawadi hasn't been composing scores for long on his own, but he wrote the music to the second biggest film of the summer in Iron Man and isn't looking back.
* Yes, I completely ignored Damon’s role in Ocean’s 13 (note: I could have gone for the easy “just like everyone else in America did” joke here, but opted not to). Collecting the quietest $100 million in history, Ocean’s 13 just wasn’t very good. It certainly didn’t hurt Damon’s career, but doesn’t bear mentioning here other than to state I am aware of its existence and that I didn’t mention it… except for when I mentioned I didn’t mention it. Yes, I think that clears things up nicely.
3) The Man No matter how you look at it, 'The Man' did very well for himself this summer.
• Studios reigned supreme. Not only was there no little-indie-that-could this summer, but the box office somehow managed to again top $3 billion. The Dark Knight pulled in more than $500 million for Warner Brothers and secured its spot as the second highest grossing movie (domestically) of all time.
• White males are finally getting a chance to play the leads in big movies. Of the top ten grossing live-action summer movies how many had white male leads? Eight. Sarah Jessica Parker and Will Smith were the two dissenters. Thank goodness white people are finally getting a fair shake.
• The good guys restored order. The Joker tried to spread anarchy, the Russians wanted mind reading capabilities and KAOS reared its ugly head. All were denied.
2) Robert Downey Jr. On paper, Robert Downey Jr., Gary Busey and Eric Roberts all seem to have the same history of vices/drug addiction. For whatever reason, Hollywood (and the American public) loves Downey Jr., while their feelings about Busey and Roberts remain ambivalent at best. All three actors are talented and extremely capable-all have been nominated for Oscars-but Busey and Roberts are presently starring in made for TV movies involving man eating tigers and guest starring on Law & Order SVU respectively, while Downey Jr. is headlining one of the biggest movies of the summer. I will never understand the way Hollywood works.
That said, Downey Jr. finally delivered here. He is a likable fellow and, as I mentioned, an extremely able actor, but his career to date has been strangely missing a big hit. Whether it was his history of drug use that caused studios to avoid working with him on big titles or just bad luck, the end result was that Downey Jr. had turned into the pre-2006 Peyton Manning of the entertainment business. Iron Man changed all that.
Marvel made a $150 million plus bet on Downey Jr. and he delivered in spades, turning Iron Man into the second biggest movie of the summer and catapulting himself to the upper echelon of the A-list names. Couple that with his charming and entertaining performance as a (faux) black guy in Tropic Thunder and this was a summer for the ages. You can't do much better than that for yourself than Downey Jr. did unless your name is as such.
1) Chris Nolan Writer/director James Cameron was the brains behind the first film to gross more than $500 million domestically, Titanic, and has spent the last eleven years doing whatever the hell he damn well pleases: Creating new cameras, developing photorealistic CGI, guest starring on Entourage and working on filming a trip to Mars, Titanic allowed Cameron the ability to wake up every morning and do exactly what he wants to do. There are almost no limits to what he can do. If he wakes up tomorrow and decides that he wants to own an NBA team, put out a hit on Tom Cruise or CGI himself into Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as the titular character, Cameron has the power and money to make it happen. Thanks to the box office performance of his film The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan just entered this club.
No character gained as much ground this summer as Superman. This was a particularly impressive feat given that Superman wasn't even in any movies that came out in 2008. However, given the strange nature of how Hollywood operates, this really shouldn't surprise anyone. 
Oh sure, Ledger's dead and all, but he (and his marketing/publicity team*) pulled one of the best going-away parties that the world has ever seen. He went out on a high note, The Dark Knight, and, even though he wasn't close to being the best actor in the business, we’ll see his name enter conversations too numerous to count suggesting that he could have been the most talented ever. Barry Sanders has nothing on him. The expression is to, “live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Ledger did just that.
Last year, the boys at Pixar made a mint with a movie about vermin. French vermin. This year, deciding that they were going to up the ante, they scored a major hit with another film, Wall • E, that featured a lead character voiced by a sound engineer (Ben Burtt) and a romantic lead voiced by a woman who'd had one previous screen credit to her name (Elissa Knight). 
On paper, Robert Downey Jr., Gary Busey and Eric Roberts all seem to have the same history of vices/drug addiction. For whatever reason, Hollywood (and the American public) loves Downey Jr., while their feelings about Busey and Roberts remain ambivalent at best. All three actors are talented and extremely capable-all have been nominated for Oscars-but Busey and Roberts are presently starring in made for TV movies involving man eating tigers and guest starring on Law & Order SVU respectively, while Downey Jr. is headlining one of the biggest movies of the summer. I will never understand the way Hollywood works. 
Writer/director James Cameron was the brains behind the first film to gross more than $500 million domestically, Titanic, and has spent the last eleven years doing whatever the hell he damn well pleases: Creating new cameras, developing photorealistic CGI, guest starring on Entourage and working on filming a trip to Mars, Titanic allowed Cameron the ability to wake up every morning and do exactly what he wants to do. There are almost no limits to what he can do. If he wakes up tomorrow and decides that he wants to own an NBA team, put out a hit on Tom Cruise or CGI himself into Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as the titular character, Cameron has the power and money to make it happen. Thanks to the box office performance of his film The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan just entered this club.