For a Hollywood summer, it was the best of times and the worst of times for movie stocks. Attendance fell to its lowest levels in more than a decade even while price increases at the box office yielded record revenues for studios and theaters.

Summer box-office revenue rose +2.4% to a record $4.35 billion in the U.S. and Canada as higher prices more than made up for the lower attendance, according to Hollywood.com Box Office estimates. The average ticket price is expected to have increased +5.1%to $7.88 from $7.50 last year, the largest overall gain since the +6.3% increase in 2000.

The good news for studios and theaters comes with a heading dose of reality. From the first weekend of May through the U.S. Labor Day holiday, total ticket sales are expected to drop -2.6% to 552 million. That would be the lowest attendance since summer 1997, when moviegoers bought 540.3 million tickets.

While this is clearly good short-term news for  movie houses including Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE: RGC), which at -14.26% year-to-date against the Dow and S&P 500 ranks No. 1 in the Movies and Entertainment industry as measure by performance, losing  -0.32% more in yesterday’s trading, and Cinemark (NYSE: CNK), which is more or less at last year’s levels. The summer prices are propped up at a time when studios are releasing their biggest and best offerings. Moviegoers might not be willing to pay premium prices for movies that don’t play well.

And, even the summer numbers aren’t as good as they could have been. This year, 13 films generated more than $100 million in domestic ticket sales, down from 15 a year earlier. Clearly the higher prices for 3D movies like Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) Toy Story 3 (the year’s top film so far with $405.7 million in U.S. sales) and Shrek Forever After, from Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc. (NYSE: DWA) and Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), helped lift revenue.

The flops hit hard. The U.S. gross (through Aug. 22) of Dogs and Cats 2 (Warner Brothers), which grossed $40 million, was a reality checks for a movie made for $85 million. The losses came with Knight & Day from News Corp.’s Fox (NASDAQ: NWSA); The A-Team (Twentieth Century Fox); Prince of Persia (Walt Disney Studios); and Robin Hood (Universal Studios), which barely made it to $100 million in the U.S. on a budget of $200 million.

During the past month, the Movie Production and Theaters industry has fallen -5.45%, in effect proving that studios may have gotten away with it for big summer blowouts, but if the economy doesn’t look ready to step up, ticket sales aren’t likely too, either. Come this fall, moviegoers may just take a pass on anything that looks remotely disappointing.

Industry eyes will be on Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), which has a 3D Harry Potter movie due this fall – right at a time when 3D begins to lose its luster. Though the future of cinema was supposed to be 3D, the hype didn’t go beyond Avatar (from News Corp.’s Fox), with a whopping +73% of its total box-office from 3D revenues. But with low results from subpar conversions on Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland, 3D revenue decreased steadily as the year went on with Cats & Dogs 2 being the lowest-grossing 3D movie to date in the modern RealD/IMAX era.

Regarding end of summer movies, the highest-grossing September on record was in 2007 with $555 million – and that no single picture has ever made $100 million during the month, September’s high-profile releases like Resident Evil: Afterlife, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, are no sure bet.

A good bet? Unless offerings improve – which isn’t likely until the holiday movie season – the industry won’t be seeing those prices again until it finds another gimmick to fill seats. Keg beer, anyone?

As of this writing, Burke Speaker did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.

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