Producer Jerry Bruckheimer entered a new stratosphere this summer. Content with more money than God, Warren Buffett and LeBron James’ posse combined and with too many ‘legacy’ pictures to count, Bruckheimer officially reached the ‘I’ll show you how good I am’ stage of his career this summer. As such, he delivered G-Force, a $170 million worldwide hit about a team of talking guinea pigs.* At this point in time, Bruckheimer could buy up the rights to Ghost Dad, release it as is and have it pull in $200 million worldwide.
* Don’t forget, earlier this year he also produced an $108 million worldwide smash about a girl who liked to shop in Confessions of a Shopaholic.
9) KATHRYN BIGELOW (director - The Hurt Locker)
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) SANDRA BULLOCK (likable actress: The Proposal)
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) BRADLEY COOPER (lead actor: The Hangover)
Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Despite his myriad talents and charms, Bradley Cooper has never been seen by the Hollywood establishment as anything but a handsome ‘nice guy’ or a handsome ‘douchebag’. He had essentially become a younger John Corbett, seemingly doomed to a lifetime of acting in romantic comedies. Then The Hangover happened. Cast in the lead, Cooper’s pretty mug became the, well, face of the enormously successful project. Amazed that he could anchor a $250 million dollar box office hit, studio executives have stopped looking at Cooper as Bill Pullman-lite and have started to look at him as Extra-Strength Josh Lucas. Cooper is rumored to be attached to the cinematic adaptation of The A Team and is now seen as a truly viable leading man in the industry. Pretty good work for simply being the good looking, charismatic guy in the summer’s most profitable movie.
6) WHITE PEOPLE (The Man)
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) QUENTIN TARANTINO (writer/director/pop culturist: Inglourious Basterds
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) RYAN REYNOLDS (leading man you love to hate: The Proposal, Wolverine)
"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) MICHAEL BAY (director/enemy of the blogosphere: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
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) GEEKS (Star Trek fans)
Let’s see, the summer opened with Wolverine. Not only did Wolverine’s success mean that more X-Men movies will follow, but fan boys also got introduced to Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, the next figure to get an Origins tale.
The week after that, a revamped Star Trek series hit theaters, giving Paramount its first home-grown $100 million hit in ages. Critical reaction would quite positive and Americans are sure to be able to look forward to a long line of Star Trek movies every third summer, ala Spider-Man and Batman.
Two weeks later another Terminator hit theaters. The movie was a flop, but another T is on the way.
A month later, Megan Fox returned aside some shiny Transformers. It provided Geeks with the realization that in a few short months they’d be able to see Fox making out with women, sucking blood and falling into swimming pool’s in Jennifer’s Body.
Three weeks later, the sixth Harry Potter film arrived. The reception was enormously positive and, most importantly, the seventh Potter novel is going to be divided in two… so audiences can pay for, er, eagerly anticipate two more movies.
August began with G.I. Joe stormed multiplexes under the watchful eye of The Mummy director, Stephen Sommers and stirred up crazy loot at the box office, suggesting that the sequel will be a matter of when and not if.
A week after that producer Peter Jackson’s District 9 was released. Geeks not only got to enjoy that film, but also the knowledge that another Jackson joint was on the way in December with Lovely Bones.
This was a great weekend for Geeks because it also marked the release of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated acid trip, Ponyo.
As if that wasn’t enough, the very next week featured the latest film from Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds.
The Summer of 2009 was a great time to go Geek.
1) TODD PHILLIPS (director: The Hangover)
Producer/director Todd Phillips earned his position atop the summer’s winner board by being the creative mind and directorial force behind the season’s most profitable film, The Hangover. Made for the relatively small, studio budget of $35 million, The Hangover grossed $275 million domestically. It did another $175 million overseas. It made back it’s entire budget (and then some) opening weekend and started The Hangover franchise. More importantly, at least to audiences, Phillips finally put together a comedy with no lulls and no wretchedly absurd Hollywood conventions (other than the happy ending). This was probably most impressive given his previous track record with films like Old School, Road Trip and Starsky and Hutch.
Phillips won’t be able to take ten years off and develop any new technology, ala Jim Cameron, because of his summer’s work,3 but thanks to his producer credit on The Hangover, he will have enough cash to do just about anything he wants.
yes, it's true: 
