Despite the somewhat surprising success of Will Smith’s Hancock, this Fourth of July weekend chilled out what had been a scorching hot summer at the movies.

Sony’s Hancock managed to gross over $100 million domestically and an additional $78.5 million overseas, but the industrywide box office take was still down 7 percent from this frame last year, as estimated by Nielsen EDI. This, despite the fact that the Fourth fell on a Friday this year, as opposed to a Wednesday last year, when Paramount’s Transformers grossed a total of $155.4 million – $27.8 million in its first day alone.

Overall, this summer’s box office take is about equal to that compared to last year, with the relatively understated holiday weekend slowing down what had been some major momentum. Nine films have opened to receipts of more than $100 million this year, compared to 14 by this point in 2007.

This weekend featured only smaller, less ambitious films to complement Hancock, which scored its big numbers amid overwhelmingly negative reviews. The family film Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the second-to-last release by the studio Picturehouse, netted only $3.6 million in its expanded release, while Sony Classic's The Wackness and IFC Films’ Diminished Capacity turned in solid per-theater performances but only opened in a combined 10 locations.