Hollywood sells about 40 percent of its annual movie tickets between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It’s pay-dirt time-the period when the right blockbluster or two can make up for all the smaller, riskier flicks a studio releases the rest of the year. It’s the movie-mad season when a “Batman” can make $40 million in its opening weekend alone; indeed, the 10 biggest opening weekends have occurred in the summer months.
What’s troubling the moguls this year is not the movies themselves. Every last one of them is, of course, fabulous. The trouble is there are just too damn many of them. Some 51 major studio releases will be clawing and scrapping for Darwinian survival. Had some of these opened in the droopy month of April, they would have been hits. Going head-to-head in an overcrowded market, something’s gotta give. “Hollywood is self-destructing by opening too many big movies in the summer,” frankly declares Universal head Tom Pollock. “The summer is so competitive that if your movie is not really very good it will fade very fast.”
With budgets in the $40 million-and-up range and massive marketing campaigns, these movies have to open in 2,000 theaters to make their money back. Problem is, there are only about 25,000 screens in the country. The movie that doesn’t perform big, and stay big, will be whisked away to make room for the next contender. “It’s simple mathematics,” explains Barry London, Paramount’s president of distribution’ “You take the number of pictures by the number of screens you need-and you know it’s not going to work.”
This is bad news for the studios that distribute the movies, but good news for the exhibitors-the folks who own the theaters. In an unusual shift in power, they can now call the terms. Theater owners pay a percentage of the box-office take to the distributors, on a sliding scale. The first week may be 90 percent to the distributor and 10 percent to the theater; over the course of the run the scale will tilt gradually the other way. (It averages out to about 60/40 in favor of the distributor, with the exhibitor making his biggest profits at the concession stand.)
But this year, due to the desperate demand for theaters, exhibitors are asking for, and getting, a higher percentage. “This is the first time I can remember the theater owners holding the trump card,” observes one studio marketing executive. The industry bible, Variety, estimates that the glut will cost studios $150 million in lost revenues. Industry observers will be nervously watching second-weekend numbers. “Everyone will get hurt this summer because no one will be able to hold theaters,” one veteran gloomily predicts. “If a movie fell off last year 40 percent in its second weekend, this year it’ll dive through the floor.”
So why, you ask, don’t the studios hold some of their big guns until the summer dust has settled? A couple of movies have strategically retreated until the fall. But most studios can’t resist the high-stakes gamble: so many of these blockbuster wanna-bes are aimed at kids, and the kids are out of school and itching for air-conditioned adventure. And many of the movies are tied in with cross-promotional merchandising deals that depend on set timing. “The Flintstones” alone has 45 promotional partners, ranging from Kraft General Foods to McDonald’s to Ramada Inns. What good would it do Nestle to have chocolate bars in the shape of scenes from Disney’s “The Lion King” out in the stores if the movie weren’t out there whetting kids’ appetites?
Few of the summer movies have been seen, but exhibitors are already handicapping the likely box-office winners. (Warning: these are the same folks who said “The Last Action Hero” was the sure-fire summer hit of ‘93.) Once again they’re putting their money on Arnold. Reteamed with “Terminator 2” director James Cameron in “True Lies,” Arnold seems battle fit, but the budget has gone over $100 million, and nobody knows whether the mixture of action and comedy will jell. The closest thing to a sure bet is probably “The Lion King.” With Disney’s spectacular track record in animation-and great buzz from those who’ve seen “Lion” as a work in progress-it’s likely to duplicate the triumphs of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin.” Then again, those hits opened in November.
Universal has high hopes for the high-profile “Flintstones,” but if rumors about its quality prove true, this may be a two-week wonder. Kevin Costner tests his star power again in Lawrence Kasdan’s three-hour-plus “Wyatt Earp.” If Julia Roberts could make “The Pelican Brief” fly, she and Nick Nolte have a good chance to make commercial magic in “I Love Trouble,” described as Tracy and Hepburn with big-action stunts. The buzz is less than overwhelming for “Beverly Hills Cop 3”: 10 years down the line, is Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley still irresistible? The odds seem better that the Harrison Ford/Tom Clancy series, represented by “Clear and Present Danger,” still has drawing power, and if you liked Billy Crystal in “City Slickers” you’ll probably want to see him on horseback again in the sequel. it would be hard to overestimate the appeal of any movie based on a John Grisham novel. “The Client,” however, doesn’t have a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts over the title: just two terrific actors, Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones.
The sleeper of the summer? The early money is on the thrill-happy “Speed,” starring a beefed-up Keanu Reeves as a cop who has to stop a bomb-laden bus. For something more quirky, Paramount is betting on ever-reliable Tom Hanks in the Robert Zemeckis fable, “Forrest Gump,” which filters 50 years of postwar American history through the eyes of its simpleton hero. Columbia’s adult entry is the Jack Nicholson/Michelle Pfeiffer “Wolf,” a Mike Nichols-directed werewolf love story. This one will need great reviews to draw blood in the marketplace. John Hughes is aiming a little lower with “Baby’s Day Out,” which is basically “Home Alone” in diapers, and Jim Carrey gets to find out if “Ace Ventura” was a fluke when the rubber-faced instant star returns in “The Mask.”
There are at least 30 more movies we could mention, if space allowed, which gives you some idea of the problem that is giving Hollywood sleepless nights. “Summer is not for the faint of heart,” warns Fox distribution head Tom Sherak. And it may not be for moviegoers who are slow on their feet. It’s a demolition derby out there, and by Labor Day the field may be littered with crash-test dummies.
PHOTOS: GET SET, GO! Top row: ‘Wolf’ Nicholson woos Pfeiffer, ‘Baby’ at the zoo, Carrey mugs in ‘Mask.’ Row two: Costner glares as Earp, Schwarzenegger flies in ‘True Lies.’ Row three: Reeves takes off in ‘Speed’; ‘Lion King,’ the classy cartoon; Goodman plays Fred Flintstone.
SUMMER SIZZLERS (OR FIZZLERS)
(Warner). EST. COST: $60 MILLION. Jodie Foster, Me] Gibson, James Garner. Based on the old TV Western series. Garner’s back, and Mel and Jodie are in the saddle. Opening May 20.
(Fox). EST. COST: $30 MILLION. Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper. Kaboom! Summer’s “Die Hard”-like sleeper. Opening June 10.
(Disney). EST. COST: $45 MILLION. Voices by Whoopi Goldberg, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, music by Elton John. Animated, surefire megamoneymaker. Opening June 16.
(Touchstone). EST. COST: $50 MILLION. Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte. Romantic comedy about competing reporters in Chicago, smells like a Tracy-Hepburn knockoff. Opening June 29.
(Paramount). EST. COST: $45 MILLION. Tom Hanks. Preview audiences love dark story of a simpleton, but it will need strong word of mouth. Opening July 6.
(Fox). EST. COST: $100 MILLION PLUS. Arnold Schwarzenegger, director James Cameron. Can Jim bring Arnie back? Opening July 15.
(Warner). EST. COST: $45 MILLION. Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones. John Grisham thriller stands to rake it in, even without Julia Roberts. Opening July 22.
(Paramount). EST. COST: $65 MILLION. Harrison Ford hooks up again with novelist Tom Clancy. Probably can’t miss. Opening Aug. 5.
title: “Survival Of The Fittest” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Johnny Otsuka”
Keitel is part of a heavyweight ensemble that includes Robert De Nifo as an Internal Affairs officer digging into the corruption and Ray Li-otta as a cop. caught between good and evil. These actors spray each other with testoster-one while the de-Ramboed Stallone waddles around droopfly. Stallone wadriling is not a comely sight. Not that his performance is lousy, it’s just that the Italian Stallion has decided to be a donkey. After a series of action bombs (Judge Dredd," “Assassins,” “Daylight”), its as if the 51-year-old Stallone decided to audit classes at the Actors Studio. Actually, pathos has always been the undertone in Stallone’s kineticism; but if he’s going serious, he needs help to build tones and colors onto that not-unappealing base.
He needs more help than writer-director James Mangold (“Heavy”) gives him. In “Cop Land,” Mangold comes through as something of a pseudo-Scorsese, assembling elements of other pictures like “Internal Affairs” and “Bad Lieutenant” into an eclectic mix that lacks its own vital reality. The older “movie brats”–Scorsese, Spielborg-galvanized their eclecticism with a passion that’s missing fr:m “Cop Land.” When Freddy finally gets angry at the bad cops and sends his waddle into overdrive, this “High Noon” denouement doesn’t seem mythic Jersey.
As for Demi Moore, no waddle for her in “G.I. lane,” not even a jiggle. As Lieutenant O’Neil, thrown into the toughest training in the U.S. military, she has to battle the resentment of her male peers as well as the scheming of the political brass who don’t want her to succeed. “The woman won’t last a week,” smirks one Pentagon pol. Watching Moore battle the heavy odds may be formulaic fun, but it’s genuine fun, and the formula is classic. G.I. Jane" is a female “An Officer and a Gentleman,” but because it centers on a woman it has a topical and even a moral force. O’Neil encounters the usual sexist jive: as she enters the mess hall in a T shirt, one navy guy cracks, “Doesn’t she know it’s rude to point?”
What makes the movie and Moore’s performance compelling is precisely the passion for self-transformation that drives O’Neil not to masculinize herself, but to push her femininity to a plane that gives her honor and equality.. Refusing to accept the “gender norming” designed to make things easier for her, she protests to a stogie-puffing officer, who retorts: “Does the phallic nature of my cigar offend your goddamn sensibilities?” O’Neil insists on meeting the same standards as the men. Moore makes this process believable: she has her initial failures, in part because the men refuse to treat her as a teammate. But presently the guys, instead of making dumb jokes, are marveling at her “25 percent body fat”; she shaves her head to make herself more aquadynamic, fiercely does one-armed push-ups, lugs landing craft around with the team, suffers tendinitis, jungle rot, menstrual cramps, and splutters through extended ocean immersion.
Of course there’s the drill sergeant, who in this nautical version bears the gorgeous title of Command Master Chief. He is merciless to O’Neil; in a climactic scene, he slugs her ruthlessly in a simulation of torture after capture by the enemy. O’Neil slugs him back in the screen’s all-time best intergender fight. Viggo Mortensen is splendid in this role; his excessive ferocity forces her to the extreme effort that is necessary if she is to succeed. Also fine is Anne Bancroft, eagle-beautiful at 65 as a senator who uses O’Neil for her own political agenda. But this is Demi Moore’s movie. Moore has become our highest-paid and most-disdained actress in movies. She is the anti-Julia Roberts, the non-Meg Ryan, the un-Michelle Pfeiffer. Moore has a distinctive class nuance that perhaps makes some people uncomfortable. In Mortal Thoughts,’ she played a working-class woman with perfect pitch, and in ‘Disclosure she was so potently bitchy that audiences probably thought she was playing herself. Where Ryan was not believable as the Desert Storm helicopter commander in “Courage Under Fire,” Moore is the real thing in “G.I. Jane.” While Stallone has decided to junk his power body, Moore makes hers an instrument of eloquence.
