I don't think the slump is nearly the deal many want it to be. There are three big difference this year over last:
No Passion of the Christ, a serious bank movie with a February release is going to seriously skew the yearly totals especially early in the year
No Spiderman movie, the Spiderman movies are making serious bank, years without them are set to be weaker than years with them for the forseeable future (until the series finally winds down and stops being a license to print money)
Harry Potter back in it's November slot, last year's HP was in June which brought a lot of earnings forward and change the year-to-date between June and November, this year's HP is in November so expect a big recovery then
And even if there is the 8% drop off, that's still a fat pile of money for the year. Many industries would beg to be able to make that much money on an off year. Then, of course, you have to factor in how much of the industry's earning are no longer American theatrically based, most of the reports I've seen put the total revenue percentage that comes from American theaters around 25% depending on the movie, so an 8% shave from 25% of the total earnings is pretty negligible.
Don't rush too quickly to bury Hollywood, there's still plenty of money rushing in.
No Spiderman, I agree, they make the numbers; but Batman wasn't bad. I liked seeing the Beginning.