We’re Talking BIG

We’re predicting one of the biggest, hottest movie summers yet. Just how big? How hot?

As for Big: UA’s “Bright Lights, Big City” with Michael J. Fox is due April 1. In June, Disney serves up Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin in “Big Business.” Also in June, Fox offers the simply titled “Big,” in which a little boy wishes he wasn’t and magically becomes Tom Hanks. In July, there’s Paramount’s “Big Top Pee-Wee,” with Mr. Herman at the circus.

The summer would have been even bigger had Universal retained the title “The Big Country” for its Dan Aykroyd-John Candy holiday camping comedy--it’s now “The Great Outdoors.” And buzz has it that Disney may yet retitle “Big Business,” having already attempted (and failed) to register it as “Double Trouble.” A final decision will be made next week, a studio source tells us.

How about movies with real “heat”: Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams are cops in the comic romp “Dead Heat,” due in May. Then, in June, there’s Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Red Heat” as a Soviet cop on the trail of an international drug dealer in America. And Fox has “Outer Heat” in July, a futuristic cop saga with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin solving a crime in L.A.’s alien (literally from another planet) community.