Worst summer for movies since 2006

The credits have rolled on Hollywood's worst summer in a decade, closing out with a dismal Labor Day weekend that was the first in a generation without a big, new movie opening in wide release.

The summer season drew a little more than $3.8 billion in sales, the first time the season's tally has dipped below the $4 billion mark since 2006, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at researcher ComScore Inc. The holiday weekend generated about $99.5 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters from Friday through Monday, the least since 1998, according to Comscore data.

The last time Hollywood studios didn't have a big Labor Day release was 1992, and the absence of a new film this weekend put a capstone on what went wrong during the usually prosperous summer season. Studios spread their big budget pictures across the calendar this year, and much of what they did offer from May to September — new installments of ongoing serials — disappointed fans.

"Some comedies didn't perform as expected and there were some great movies that didn't resonate here, although they did better internationally," Dergarabedian said by phone Sunday. "All it takes are one or two movies to harm the bottom line in a profound way."

The domestic box office is down about 6 percent year to date compared with a year earlier, according to ComScore.