LOS ANGELES — This was the year that Hollywood hit ticket-selling heights by stranding Sandra Bullock in space, educating monsters, bringing back Superman (again) and teaching Brad Pitt to outwit zombies. By the time the Hobbit was unleashed (again), the box office was on fire, even if half of North America was "Frozen."

Movie studios sustained some devastating flops in 2013, among them the samurai epic "47 Ronin," which limped into theaters on Christmas. But it was a solid 12 months over all: Rentrak, a firm that compiles box-office data, projected on Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would total $10.9 billion, a 1 percent increase from 2012. Analysts predict similar attendance numbers to last year's, about 1.36 billion people.

Hollywood did it largely by serving more of the same. The five leading films at the global box office were all sequels. "Iron Man 3" was the top-selling movie of the year, taking in $409 million in North America, for a global total of more than $1.2 billion. "Despicable Me 2" was second with nearly $920 million in sales, followed by "Fast & Furious 6," "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "Monsters University" (actually, a prequel). And get ready for more: Crucially for their future business prospects, movie studios managed to introduce an unusually large number of new franchises. Sequels are already in the works for at least eight of the nonsequel films released in 2013, including "The Conjuring," "The Croods," "We're the Millers" and "Man of Steel."

"It bodes very well for our future," said Greg Foster, chief executive of Imax Filmed Entertainment, which set a series of box-office records over the year.

Despite the celebration, some studio executives are doing a little soul searching. Again and again, audiences showed that they were starving for originality.

"Gravity," the 3-D space picture with essentially a cast of two, Ms. Bullock and George Clooney, became a phenomenon. It took in $254.6 million in North America, for a global total of $653.3 million. "Now You See Me," the kind of middle-budget movie that most big studios left for dead a few years ago, sold $117.7 million in tickets, for a worldwide total of $351.7 million.

"This Is the End," a raunchy apocalyptic comedy starring James Franco and Jonah Hill as themselves, took in $101.5 million domestically — only a smidgen less than the 2013 movie that may have epitomized more of the same, "The Hangover Part III."

"People do seem to want different," said Richie Fay, president for domestic distribution at Lionsgate. "You've certainly now got to give people movies that they will come away talking about."

Moviedom is also ending the year, as it has the past few, ruminating about ceding cultural ground to television. Combined, three presumed best picture contenders — "Nebraska," "Her" and "Inside Llewyn Davis" — have been seen by roughly one-tenth of the more than 10 million viewers who tuned in to the last episode of "Breaking Bad."

The serious side of feature filmmaking kept slipping toward a future in which theatrical release is just a seal of approval for pictures that are intended to be seen elsewhere. Among the year's documentary success stories was "Blackfish," about SeaWorld's treatment of orcas and their trainers. The film stayed in theaters long enough to be certified as a "movie" by reviewers and awards voters, but the payoff came when it moved to video-on-demand services a month later, and CNN Films, its backer, quickly landed it in front of the real audience: television viewers.

"Moviegoers want compelling ideas," Mr. Foster said, noting "Gravity" as one film that delivered (particularly in his theaters). "I take my hat off to television for it. Television has been incredibly compelling and thoughtful."

It was a tough year for the good-behavior watchdogs of popular culture. Oprah Winfrey smoked in "Lee Daniels' The Butler," a late-summer hit, as did Meryl Streep in "August: Osage County." Cigarettes glammed up the cafe scenes in "Inside Llewyn Davis." The monitoring group SceneSmoking.org even gave a black lung rating for excessive tobacco use to "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." (Smog?)

By June, every major studio was peddling guns in its marketing for films like Universal's "R.I.P.D." and "2 Guns," and a study backed by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that gun violence in the top-selling PG-13 movies had surpassed that in best sellers rated R.

In a wearying year, Americans sidestepped wearying movies. They rejected "The Fifth Estate," an Oscar hopeful centered on the WikiLeaks organization; it cost DreamWorks Studios about $26 million to make and took in a total of $8.6 million, roughly half of which goes to theater owners. Even returning to the Old West even seemed too much, as "The Lone Ranger" became one of the biggest flops in memory, requiring a write-down of about $160 million.

When consumers did leave their sofas, whether to watch "Star Trek Into Darkness" or "Thor: The Dark World," it was to get away from their problems, not to work them out. "People are jittery in the country," said Brad Grey, chief executive at Paramount, which found hits in films like "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa." "They're jittery over Obamacare, a whole list of issues." The best response for a movie studio, he suggested, is "to think very, very long term."

No serious documentary made a deep impression at the box office. The only chart topper was Morgan Spurlock's boy-band concert film "One Direction: This Is Us," which had about $28.9 million in domestic sales. It was a far cry from 2004, when "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Mr. Spurlock's own "Super Size Me" filled seats.

Even when moviegoers watched nonfiction, or at least a lightly fictionalized version of it, they seemed to be showing up less for a history lesson or pieties than for a good time, as was offered by Sony's "American Hustle," promoted with hairdos and cleavage, or Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street," with its hookers and drug use.

"The Wolf of Wall Street" (Paramount) was the No. 1 new movie over the weekend, taking in an estimated $18.5 million, for a total since opening on Wednesday of $34.3 million. Still, the movie's hefty cost — about $100 million, independently financed by Red Granite Pictures — and lackluster C score from audiences in exit polls make profitability an extremely steep climb.

Ben Stiller's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (20th Century Fox) was the second-most-watched new movie over the weekend, selling a soft $13 million in tickets, for a total since opening on Wednesday of $25.6 million. It cost about $90 million to produce and will need to make up significant ground to become a financial success.

The lightly marketed "47 Ronin" (Universal) fizzled as expected, taking in $9.9 million, for a five-day opening total of $20.6 million. Championed at Universal by the studio's former chairman — who was fired in the fall — "47 Ronin" cost $175 million to make. Analysts estimate the movie will lose roughly $100 million, putting it in "The Lone Ranger" territory. Universal declined to discuss specific losses but confirmed in a statement that it had already taken a write down on the film, saying, "We adjusted film costs in previous quarters, and as a result our financial performance will not be negatively impacted this quarter."

Although Universal also experienced a big flop in the summer, "R.I.P.D.," the studio had both "Despicable Me 2" (which has yet to open in China) and "Fast & Furious 6." It also had one of the year's best-performing comedies in "Identity Thief," starring Melissa McCarthy, who had a very good year; she also co-starred in "The Heat," which took in more than $134.5 million for Fox.

But it wasn't just the big movies that made a difference for Hollywood. Solidly performing little films also offered a lift. TheWrap.com, an entertainment trade news site, counted seven movies that started out in very limited release — pictures like Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" and the independently produced "The Way, Way Back" — and managed to take in more than $20 million.

"Instructions Not Included," from Pantelion, part owned by Lionsgate, became the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever in the United States, with more than $44 million. Taken with the success of several movies with predominantly African-American casts, including "The Butler" and "The Best Man Holiday," "Instructions Not Included" demonstrated an audience hunger for diversity in pictures.

"Those are niche types of films," Lionsgate's Mr. Fay said, "that went beyond their borders to become solid hits."