BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Two summers ago Hollywood movie executives were tearing their hair out while lamenting a startling drop in revenue from 2004 and muttering about the demise of the industry. But the 2007 summer season sizzled with blockbuster hits as the film industry recorded its first 4 billion U.S. dollar summer ever.

    Box-office tracker Media By Numbers said the industry will rake in about 4.15 billion dollars from the first weekend in May through Labor Day. That's an increase of 8 percent from last summer, surpassing the previous high of 3.95 billion dollars in summer 2004.

    Factoring in annual rises in admission prices, about 606 million tickets were sold this summer, up 3 percent from 2006. But the season was only the sixth-best for modern Hollywood, whose biggest summer for attendance since the golden age of the 1930s, '40s and '50s came in 2002, when 653.4 million tickets were sold, according to Media By Numbers.

    "Everyone should be very happy with the result. The movie industry is alive and well, in comparison to maybe what was being said a few years ago," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony, which started the summer with a record-breaking 151.1 million dollar opening weekend for "Spider-Man 3" and also released "Superbad," which is on its way to becoming a 100 million dollar hit.

    "Spider-Man 3" was quickly followed by DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek the Third" and Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," the third installments in those three franchises all shooting past 300 million dollars domestically.

    While there were a couple of box-office underachievers, Hollywood produced no outright bombs this summer, unlike two years ago, when the season was littered with flops such as "The Island," "Stealth" and "The Bad News Bears."

    "It's a tribute to the fact that we as a collective group paid attention to the audience and made sure that what we put out was satisfying," said Chris Aronson, senior vice president of distribution for 20th Century Fox. "At the end of the day, it says that if it's good, they're going to come. The demise of the movie business is very premature. It's a healthy business as long as the quality of the movies is there."

    For the full year, movie revenues are up 7 percent and attendance has risen 2.5 percent compared to last year.

    (Agencies)