This year’s domestic summer box office was up by around 7% over that of 2005, according to industry estimates, putting to rest fears that Canadians were fleeing the multiplex.

Exhibition expert Howard Lichtman, president of consultancy the Lightning Group, calls 2005 – when the summer receipts dropped 10% from those of a stellar ’04 – an aberration in an otherwise buoyant Canadian market.

This season ‘definitely was the summer of the family,’ he says. ‘We had Ice Age: The Meltdown, Over the Hedge and Cars. The only family film that broke out last year was Madagascar.’

Ellis Jacob, president and CEO of Cineplex Entertainment, puts the box-office hike this summer at 7% to 8%, on par with the U.S. market, though he could not provide dollar figures. Lichtman has it at 6%.

Entertainment analysts at Rentrak say this summer’s box office took in $300.7 million, up from $288.3 million last year.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was ‘the big hit of the summer,’ says Jacob. ‘It had broad appeal. It crossed a lot of demographics, appealing to kids and women, and there was the appeal of the sequel.’

The Disney action comedy brought in US$420 million this summer, with Canada representing roughly 10% of that total ­- a typical share for Hollywood fare unspooling in Canada.

A notable exception is Sony Pictures’ The Da Vinci Code, which raked in US$220 million across North America, with Canada’s share pegged at around 13%. Traditionally, Hollywood movies that are based on novels and have European backdrops – such as the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises – tend to do better in Canada than in the U.S.

Conversely, Pixar’s animated Cars, this summer’s number two hit with US$240 million in North America, slightly underperformed here (passing $11 million) as young Canadians were still in school when it came out on June 9, and may have not embraced the NASCAR storyline as readily as their American counterparts.

Canadian box-office bombs largely mirrored U.S. performance, as in the case of Warner Bros.’ Poseidon (US$61 million on a production budget of US$160 million) and Lady in the Water (US$42 million on a US$70 million budget).

Rob Wales, VP of film programming at Empire Theatres, agrees that the exhibitor take was up on last summer’s box office, but set no records.

‘In Canada, it’s also dependent on the weather. And we haven’t had a lot of rainy days, which jolts the box office,’ he says.

Other winners this summer include 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: The Last Stand and The Devil Wears Prada, Disney’s Step Up and Sony’s Adam Sandler-starring comedy Click.