The LAT story on the weekend’s box office goes on and on about how Hollywood is on track to break a record.

The geek comedy “Superbad” was surprisingly popular in its opening weekend, racking up $31.2 million in the U.S. and Canada and putting Hollywood squarely on pace for a record summer at the box office.

[…]

Industrywide box-office totals were up from the same weekend in 2006 for the sixth straight time, according to Sunday’s studio estimates.

At $3.83 billion in ticket sales, this summer is running 10% ahead of last year—and with two weeks to go it looks certain to break the record of $3.95 billion from summer 2004.

It’s all very interesting, until you get to the last three grafs:

Even so, ticket price inflation is one of the big reasons the summer box office will exceed $4 billion for the first time.

Attendance is the strongest in three years but running behind the 2002-2004 period.

This summer will end up with about 600 million tickets sold, Media by Numbers projects, well shy of the record 650 million from summer 2002. That year the original “Spider-Man” and “Star Wars: Episode II” led the way.

In other words, it’s not a record, just … hype. But this would be a much less interesting lede:

“It’s been a decent summer for Hollywood, but attendance is still down a hefty 7 or 8 percent from the highs earlier this decade.”

p.s. There’s no “record 650 million from summer 2002,” by the way. Movie admissions today are a third or a fourth what they were in the 1940s, when the population was half what it is today. The 650M figure may be the highest since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when movie-going in America reached its nadir.