BOX-OFFICE PROTECTION

We don’t know if Rob Lowe and Meg Tilly will be practicing safe sex in their new movie for MGM--but the studio is apparently practicing safe marketing.

MGM is changing the title of “Dying for Love” to “Masquerade.” The studio calls it “a marketing decision” based on surveys that indicate “the new title plays better.”

But it may have as much to do with worry over an AIDS stigma: The film’s writer/executive producer, Dick Wolf, told us that recent AIDS-awareness condom ads equating making love with dying had caused studio nervousness about the original title.

“Definitely not,” said a studio rep. But just prior to the name change, cast and crew alike were buzzing on the set about the studio’s uneasiness over the title--and the ads.

The film, now shooting on in and around New York, stars Lowe and Tilly as a romantically involved couple enmeshed in intrigue and murder. Due out in early 1988, the film marks the first American project for Bob Swaim (“La Balance,” “Half Moon Street”), an American expatriate based in Paris.