Somewhere between $4.73 billion and $4.76 billion, Hollywood just had its best summer ever.

According to Rentrak, cited by Variety, domestic ticket sales from May 1 through Labor Day on September 7 hit $4.76 billion, edging past the $4.755 billion mark set in 2013 by "Iron Man 3," "Despicable Me 2" and "Man of Steel." Koimoi, quoting box office analyst Luiz Fernando, has the running total at $4.73 billion and says the season is still roughly $20 million short of that same 2013 benchmark. Either way, this is the closest the industry has come to that record in over a decade, and the record books will likely need a footnote or two.

Because there always are footnotes with numbers like this. The 2013 total was never adjusted for inflation, and this year's summer window ran 130 days against 2013's 123, a quirk of where Labor Day landed on the calendar. So the comparison isn't perfectly clean. It's still a real signal, though, of an industry that spent five pandemic-shadowed years wondering if audiences would come back.

They came back every single month. May brought in $1.07 billion, June $1.08 billion, July $1.18 billion and August — the biggest August on record, closed at $1.27 billion. It's the first summer ever where all four months individually crossed $1 billion, according to Rentrak. Given that the summer window typically accounts for 40% of a year's total box office, that consistency matters more than any single weekend does.

One film did most of the heavy lifting. Sony's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" has pulled in $923 million domestically and $2.4 billion worldwide, per Variety, with Koimoi putting the domestic figure at a close $917.8 million as of Sunday. It's on track to pass "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" as the highest-grossing film ever at the North American box office, unadjusted, and sits third globally behind "Avatar" and "Avengers: Endgame." Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" backed it up with $589 million domestic and $1.62 billion worldwide, with Imax alone contributing $486 million, nearly a third of its total haul.

Not everything worked. Disney's live-action "Moana," Warner Bros.' "Supergirl" and Amazon MGM's "Masters of the Universe" all underperformed, per Variety, even as sleeper hits like "Obsession" and "Backrooms" quietly padded the ledger.

Over the Labor Day weekend itself, "Brand New Day" led for a sixth straight frame with $23.5 million, trailed by "The Odyssey" at $17.3 million in its eighth week and "Coyote vs. Acme" at $15.8 million, the Warner Bros. Write-off turned indie hit that Ketchup Entertainment rescued after fan backlash. Paramount's new thriller "By Any Means," starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg, opened soft at $9.3 million, and both "Fall 2: Deadpoint" and A24's "Onslaught" missed the top ten entirely.

The momentum doesn't stop with Labor Day. "Avengers: Doomsday" arrives in December, an "Endgame" re-release is slotted in ahead of it, and "Dune 3" and "Jumanji: Open World" are both still to come this year. Whether that keeps the record books rewriting themselves is the next thing to watch.