The biggest movie story of 2005 -- at times it seemed like it was the ONLY movie story of 2005 -- was the Great Box Office Slump.

Nearly every Monday from January through December, there was an avalanche of gloom-and-doom reports about yet another disappointing weekend at the box office. Things sounded so dire, I half-expected to read that all the major studios and the independents were shutting down, and everybody in the business was going to have to find another line of work.

Sean Penn would become a social studies teacher. Jamie Foxx could get a gig playing piano in a Chicago jazz club. Angelina Jolie would become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. (Or does she already have that job?)

Years from now, we'd be telling the grandkids that Hollywood stopped making movies altogether because of the Great Box Office Slump of 2005. ("And that's why there was never another 'Deuce Bigalow' after 'European Gigolo,' little Timmy.")