JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE BUDGET

Where goest “Journey to the Center of the Earth”?

Originally scheduled by Cannon for last Christmas, it didn’t even show up on this year’s schedule.

But first-time feature director Rusty Lemorande (who wrapped principal photography last fall) assures us the film will happen by Christmastime and that delays are customary on effects-heavy films. (Lemorande should know--he produced the late-in-coming “Captain EO.”)

Lemorande pointed out that this effects picture is being done on a slim budget (about $6 million): “What we don’t have in money we need in time. I hope we pull off a great magic act.” He added: “The fact that Cannon is still editing the film is a testament to their belief in it.”

The script, by Lemorande, is updated Jules Verne--kids on holiday in Hawaii who go down a volcano, smack dab into the Earth’s center, where they encounter an oddball scientist (comic Emo Phillips) and an underground enemy civilization the kids eventually turn into friends.

“In a sense, that’s what I’m trying to do,” sighed Lemorande. “In working out these creative conflicts. I’d like to turn Cannon back into my friends.”

Cannon co-chairman Menahem Golan is philosophical about “Journey”: “It’s the normal difficulties for a first-time director. It happens in the best of families.”

Stressing that the end result will be “a very special, unique family film,” brought in on a tight budget (“one of those miracles that can only happen at Cannon”), Golan said: “I don’t really see what all this fuss is about. If you go into a dining room, you don’t want to know everything that happened in the kitchen, do you? You don’t need to know if it’s been recooked. All you want is for the food to be good.

“So I can only tell you to expect a good movie--which happened to take us a little longer.”