Hollywood expects to hit $4 billion mark for summer

Those behind “Superbad” have a surprise big-money hit, which will help Hollywood break the $4 billion mark this summer.

The $33 million made by “Superbad” over the weekend, up about 6 percent from Sunday’s first estimates, bolstered predictions that this will be Hollywood’s best summer ever.

“We will certainly surpass $4 billion and probably be around $4.1 billion,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of ticket sales tracker Media By Numbers, in a report by Reuters. “I also think we will be at 600 million tickets sold, which we haven’t seen in a few years,”

So far, domestic ticket sales stand at around $3.83 billion, up 10 percent from last year and 5 percent ahead of the pace for 2004’s record summer of $3.95 billion.

Admissions are 559 million, up 5 percent from last year, according to Media By Numbers.

The season has seen several films surpass expectations (“Transformers,” “The Simpsons Movie,” “Hairspray,” “Ratatouille”) to go with megahits (“Spider-Man 3,” “Shrek the Third,” “Pirates of the Caribbean”). The surprises included “1408,” “Knocked Up” and now “Superbad,” while “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Live Free or Die Hard” did about what the industry expected.