Typically, as July dwindles to a close the summer box-office season begins to taper off significantly, with the last few weeks of July or the first several of August marking the last hurrah of the major studio tent-pole releases for the lucrative period. Depending on how that applies to this summer, the season may have already seen its final $100 million hit with Inception, or Salt – opening solidly despite playing second fiddle to Inception, or later with the CGI heavy animal sequel to Cats & Dogs, or that distinction could be delayed until the following month with the cop-comedy The Other Guys launching the first week of August. If this summer is anything like summer 2009, the season is far from over.

To put it lightly, August 2009 was an eventful time for the box-office. Three films raked in over $110 million while one made it onto the top ten list for summer earners. Two of those $100+ million hits were Academy Award nominees for Best Picture (District 9 and Inglorious Basterds, opening on back-to-back weekends). Debuting on Labor Day weekend, The Final Destination – the first and surely not last 3-D entry in the Final Destination franchise – was the top grossing film in its franchise. With the exception of its two big-draw sequels (Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and the sixth Harry Potter), August 2009 was a bigger month than July. Both August 2008 and August 2007 had at least two films that crossed the $100 million threshold (2007′s Bourne Ultimatum pulled in over $220 million with the biggest opening ever for an August release – $69 million). Obviously, this is a different year with different films, but without an opener in the nine figure range it would be the first August without one since 2000 (though August 2004 came extremely close with Collateral barely edging over the century mark).

Fortunately, August 2010 has a number of legitimate chances for lofty box-office performers. The Other Guys star Will Ferrell headlined the only real blockbuster of the otherwise weak August 2006 – Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. His Other Guys co-star has already been in one nearly-$100 million hit this year with Date Night, though he was secondary attraction. Elsewhere in the month, Julia Roberts hopes to score her first $100 million pic since the Ocean’s series with Eat Pray Love (unless one counts her appearance in Valentine’s Day, in which every actor/actress was essentially an extended cameo). The next weekend a duo aimed at fan-pleasing is set to go head-to-head for the weekend crown with The Expendables facing off against Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Starring a deep cast of action stars of varying generations (Slyvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Mickey Rourke to name a few, while Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis make brief appearances as well) The Expendables poises itself as an unpretentious, somewhat nostalgic homage/throwback to the 80s action films of its director’s (Stallone) heyday; sporting a trailer stuffed to the brim with explosions, shootouts, fist fights and other destruction. Scott Pilgrim takes aim at an audience carving for a radically different, more new-age action experience – sporting advertisements vividly capturing the cartoonish sensibility of its graphic novel origin (one of its poster boasts the slogan of “an epic of epic epicness”). Both The Expendables and Scott Pilgrim have massive theatrical potential, though their shared core genre may split that potential in half, leaving each stranded in not-quite-hit-not-quite-failure gray area.

As proven time and time again in the past, there is plenty of room for unexpected successes to battle their way to box-office glory. The biggest August starter of all time – The Sixth Sense – became a sleeper hit going on to make almost $300 million in the U.S. alone. Without any Best Picture nominees or seeing of dead people, many a surprise could creep up between July’s end and the start of September.