WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

Ironies abound in the late-summer box-office wars. Just as Coca-Cola Inc. was announcing it was broadly restructuring its entertainment properties--including Columbia and Tri-Star Pictures--in order to incite more public stock purchases, two of Columbia’s pictures, “The Big Easy” and “La Bamba,” continued to light up the box office. Coupled with the relative success of “Roxanne”--but smarting from the $25-million write-off of “Ishtar”--the newly joined “Col-Star” companies should deal well with the fall movie glut right around the corner. So should Walt Disney, which has been enjoying successes both expected--such as “Stakeout”--and unexpected, like the picked-up “Can’t Buy Me Love”--all year long.

* The moviegoing public may be growing disenchanted with the film industry’s Vietnam-film binge, though. This Paramount offering, the latest in a small flood of Vietnam-themed pictures out in the wake of “Platoon,” had a sizable drop-off in business from last week, and exhibitors are chary of any more Vietnam pictures for the near future.

Figures courtesy of Exhibitor Relations Co.

Weekend Screens/ Weeks Movie gross/ Average in (Studio) Total release (millions) 1. Stakeout $7.1 1,355 5 (Buena Vista) $40.7 $5,240 2. Dirty Dancing $4.9 1,002 3 (Vestron) $16.5 $4,890 3. No Way Out $4.4 1,132 4 (Orion) $22.2 $3,887 4. The Big Easy $4.2 1,219 3 (Columbia) $9.1 $3,446 5. La Bamba $3.7 1,186 6 (Columbia) $42.4 $3,120 * Hamburger Hill $3.3 814 2 (Paramount) $7.9 $4,054