The box office numbers have led to intense, broad-ranging conversations across Hollywood about the implications. Many studios have commissioned market research to investigate the causes of moviegoing behavior -- or the lack thereof. At New Line, executives have been talking about the "sameness of everything" on movie schedules, one executive said. At 20th Century Fox this week, a half-dozen top executives held an impromptu brainstorming session at the commissary with a reporter, debating the effects of gas prices and marketing missteps.

Tom Rothman, co-chairman of 20th Century Fox, was one of the few to see no negative trend in the current numbers. "Everybody keeps saying it's the worst of times; it seems fine to me," said Mr. Rothman, whose studio has had some big-budget successes this summer, with "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "The Fantastic Four." He noted, for example, that the advent of DVD's has expanded the overall revenues of the movie industry. "For us the business is healthy, but it requires management," Mr. Rothman said.

Just about everywhere else, though, the concern is palpable -- and understandable, not only because of the performance of this summer's movies, but also because a decline is discernible over time: overall movie attendance, a figure not affected by inflation, has slid to below where it stood in mid-August 2001. DVD sales, while still robust, are no longer rising exponentially, and some analysts say that a poor box office performance this summer will lead to poor DVD sales this winter.

With billions of dollars at stake, nerves are growing understandably frayed. Last week, John Fithian, the president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, accused Robert A. Iger , the incoming chief executive of Walt Disney, of leveling a "death threat" at theater owners for having suggested that the lesson to be drawn from the slump is that moviegoers want films to be accessible in theaters and on DVD simultaneously.

"The structure of the industry is sound," said Mr. Fithian, who believes in maintaining a distance between the theatrical release and the DVD. "We just need a few more good movies."

Mr. Iger had observed that studios ignored consumers at their peril. "We can't allow tradition to stand in the way of where the consumer can go, or wants to go," he told analysts this month, warning that "the music industry learned this the hard way."