• by Wayne Friedman , December 27, 2017

With just a couple days to go until the end of the year, U.S. box office results look to sink to a three-year low — down nearly 3% from a year ago. But this is an improvement from mid-year results.

Season-to-date through December 25, the U.S. box office is down 2.8% to $10.7 billion, according to boxofficemojo.com. These results are also down 0.4% from 2015's year-to-date results.

Last year, U.S. box-office results were at $11.4 billion -- up 2.2% from 2015. The year before, they hit $11.1 billion -- 7.4% higher than 2014.

Earlier in 2017, for the big summer movie schedule, comScore estimated that the U.S. summer box-office revenue dropped a steep 15.7% to $3.78 billion from the prior year, which also included sharp declines in attendance.

The recent revenue gain is largely attributable to the sudden rush of strongly performing movies in November -- especially Walt Disney’s “Thor: Ragnarok,” Warner Bros’ “Justice League” and Disney’s “Coco.”

More recently, over the Christmas holidays, there was another big gain. Walt Disney’s “Star Wars: “The Last Jedi” delivered the second-best-opening weekend ever: $220 million. To date, it has seen $396.6 in U.S. box-office revenue.