‘Wall Street’ Makers Look for Upturn : Financial Melodrama Doing Well in Big Cities, but Not Elsewhere

So far, Main Street has turned its back on Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” But curious yuppie audiences and big-city dwellers have turned out in droves.

Twentieth Century Fox movie marketers now face the delicate task of bridging that demographic gulf--or watching their much-publicized financial melodrama become one of the season’s more serious box-office disappointments.

“We’ve always known that the subject matter was a tough sell,” Thomas Sherak, Fox’s marketing and distribution chief said of the film’s uneven opening. “Wall Street” wrestles with the complexities of illegal insider stock trading among New York’s powerful investment bankers.

But Sherak still contends that the mass audience will come around by Christmas Day, when “Wall Street” broadens to 1,000 theater screens from its current 730.

To help matters along, Fox has dropped hard-edged newspaper advertisements that highlighted star Michael Douglas as cigar-wielding villain Gordon Gekko, in favor of a softer campaign. The second-wave ads, in keeping with a planned marketing strategy, play up the film’s love story by showing young star Charlie Sheen (“Platoon”) in an embrace with Daryl Hannah (“Roxanne,” “Legal Eagles”).

During its initial weekend, “Wall Street” had a reported box-office gross of $4.1 million. The movie cost more than $15 million to produce. It trailed Orion’s “Throw Momma From the Train,” with $7.3 million in ticket sales, and Disney’s “Three Men and a Baby,” which took in $7 million at the box office last weekend.

The Fox film was an extremely hot ticket in Manhattan and in upscale pockets of Los Angeles, Washington, and other big cities.

“It’s really running to capacity,” said Richard Donnelly of City Cinemas, whose chain is playing the film at one Manhattan theater. Audience reaction is “actually better than the critics’ reaction,” Donnelly said. “Wall Street’s” reviews were mixed, as some critics found the film unsubtle, heartless or too technical.

“New York and L.A. were what you would consider to be successful runs,” said Donald Harris, a top marketing executive for the AMC theater chain, which put the picture in 72 theaters, including five in the Los Angeles area.

“The picture clearly is performing better in the larger markets--in the urban centers--than in the neighborhoods,” Harris said. He declined to comment on reportedly disappointing box-office results in the suburban areas of such cities as Detroit, Atlanta and Houston.

According to others, however, Middle America has been slow to buy into director and co-writer Stone’s vision, despite--or because--of more than a year of news stories about real-life financial scandals. (On Friday, arbitrageur Ivan Boesky was sentenced to three years in prison for his illegal dealings.)

“You’d have to call (the film’s box-office sales) good, but not great. . . . We thought the picture would do much better,” said Michael Ogrodowski, film buyer for the Marcus Theaters in Wisconsin, which opened the movie in Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay.

Ogrodowski noted that “yuppie areas” proved to be “pockets of support”--possibly indicating that young professionals are intrigued by fictional stockbroker Bud Fox’s crisis of conscience in the film.

But several theater owners said “Wall Street’s” cinematic expose of financial shenanigans seemed to alienate more than entice mainstream audiences.

“Maybe there wasn’t enough love in the picture,” said James Bishop, a film buyer for Tom Moyers Theaters, which opened “Wall Street” to less-than-expected business on 10 screens in Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Alaska.

“There isn’t applause at the end of the movie,” said Freeman Fisher of Circle Theaters, which is showing “Wall Street” in seven Maryland, Virginia and District of Columbia theaters. “The audience comes out, and I think many are annoyed, especially if they’re in the (brokerage) business.” But Fisher said other viewers are enthusiastic.

In the District of Columbia, with its heavy population of bureaucrats and professionals, the Fox film “trounced” “Three Men” and “Throw Momma,” both conventional holiday comedies, Freeman said. In the nearby blue-collar town of Waldorf, Md., however, “Wall Street” pulled in only about $1,000 last weekend, compared to about six times that amount for “Three Men.”

Sherak insisted that suburbia “will get a lot better” for “Wall Street” by Christmas. He believes, for instance, that younger viewers, helped by the new ads, can be drawn to see Sheen’s first major performance since “Platoon,” which was also directed by Stone.

Still, it appears that Fox is getting much less wallop than it had originally expected from “Wall Street.”

According to one exhibition executive, the studio a month ago asked theater owners to guarantee Fox at least as much revenue from the film as it received from “Jewel of the Nile,” a 1985 Fox picture that starred Michael Douglas and brought the studio $37 million in rentals.

The executive, who declined to be identified, said Fox dropped the unusually stiff guarantee demand after exhibitors expressed strong doubts about “Wall Street’s” drawing power.

Sherak declined to comment.