Pandemic-battered movie theaters are feeling good after a strong June.

For two years, the film industry lived in genuine fear about the future of moviegoing, with no one able to say for sure whether cinemas would recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Sitting in the dark in a theater to watch moving images — a 117-year-old American pastime that was already in long, slow decline — may well have encountered its extinction-of-the-dinosaurs moment.

Superhero movies excepted, of course.

But box office analysts say…