Drawing the Hollywood Battle Lines for ’89 : Studios Seek Sure-Fire Success With Sequels

What kind of artillery are the Hollywood studios rolling out in this year’s war for the box-office dollar?

Big.

Big budgets, big names, and biggest of all, big sequels.

Like generals, studio executives usually are most comfortable fighting the last war. So as they prepare for 1989, Hollywood’s major studios are relying on battle-tested artillery. As one executive-turned-independent producer put it: “Sequels to blockbuster hits may not be great creatively, but they ensure everyone’s job.”

In 1988, Disney dominated the box office for the first time in history, knocking Paramount into second place, according to final figures prepared this week by Entertainment Data Inc. Fox placed third, followed by MGM/UA and Warner Bros. running neck and neck at fourth. Universal placed sixth, with mini-major Orion, and Coca-Cola Co.’s Tri-Star and Columbia trailing.

But this year’s string of major sequels and big-budget action pictures could turn those battle results topsy-turvy in 1989.

“The top spot is more wide open than in a long time,” predicts Mara Balsbaugh, an entertainment industry analyst with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co.

Paramount, which sold 15.2% of all movie tickets in the United States, according to Entertainment Data, will make a bid to regain the No. 1 spot it has held for the last several years by wheeling out “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”

Fox, whose share of the box-office dollar jumped from 9% to nearly 12% in 1988, had good luck at the box office with “Aliens” in 1986. The studio is hoping “Aliens” producer Gale Ann Hurd and director James Cameron will deliver the same kind of results with “The Abyss,” a big-budget underwater action picture (industry sources put the film’s price tag at more than $40 million) to be released this summer. The studio also will release a sequel to the hit 1986 horror film “The Fly” early this year.

Warner Bros. is looking to a couple of sequels--the first to “Lethal Weapon,” the fifth to “Police Academy”--and its big-budget “Batman” to reverse its 1988 slide in box-office shares. In 1987, the Burbank-based studio accounted for more than 13% of all tickets sold. Last year, its cut was just 10.3%.

Last year was not a sterling one for Universal--that is, until the box-office success of its Christmas comedy “Twins,” which helped the studio capture 9.9% of the market. The coming year could be even brighter for Universal, predicts Balsbaugh. And, as usual, there’s a big sequel behind that thinking: “Back to the Future 2.”

Even Columbia, which limped through last year with only 3.1% of the market, will jumpback into the fray with its first sequel to its 1984 blockbuster “Ghostbusters,” as well as “Karate Kid 3.”

Ironically, the new box-office champion, Disney, is the one studio moving away from the tried-and-true. “What’s impressive is that they haven’t (dominated the box office) with sequels; they’ve done it with incredible discipline,” says Alex Ben Block, editor of Show Biz News.

But Disney, whose films accounted for 19.4% of all ticket sales last year, does have its own time-tested formulas for adult comedies. This year, though, the studio is broadening its offerings, producing dramas and permitting some of its star comic talent--like Bette Midler, Robin Williams and Tom Selleck--take shots at more serious roles.

There could be one huge exception to that: While it is not yet on Disney/Touchstone’s 1989 release schedule, the studio is moving ahead with a sequel to its 1987 hit, “Three Men and a Baby.” Production begins this spring, so the film could be released at the end of this year, or the beginning of 1990.

Aside from that production, Disney doesn’t have an obvious blockbuster on its schedule. But then, Disney hits are never easily identified. Anyone could have predicted that Paramount’s sequel to the popular “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee” would be a hit, but who could have guessed that Disney’s “Three Men and a Baby” would rake in $168 million?

MGM/UA also captured its 10.5% of the market last year with original offerings like “A Fish Called Wanda,” and “Moonstruck,” a 1987 release that collected ticket money well into 1988. Even the studio’s own executives admit that will be hard to top this year, though they have high hopes for films like “Road House,” starring Patrick Swayze, and “A Dry White Season,” featuring Marlon Brando in his first film role since 1980. The studio’s “Rain Man” currently dominates the competition at the box office.

In an age when the top management of Hollywood’s studios seem to be thrown out with the regularity of spring cleaning, executives naturally lean toward proven hits. A sad fact of movie economics is that most films lose money. And one blockbuster can go a long way toward paying for all those flops.

Paramount is the leader in that game. The studio’s two summer blockbusters--Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America” and “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II”--accounted for more than 43% of the studio’s ticket sales, even though 17 other Paramount films were playing in theaters last year.

Disney’s blockbusters last year were less predictable, but gave studio executives the same kind of safety net. The studio’s “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” was an expensive gamble that paid off. According to Entertainment Data, “Roger Rabbit” accounted for more than one-fifth of Disney’s total box- office take in 1988. So, who cares if moviegoers barely noticed “Heartbreak Hotel,” “The Rescue,” and “The Good Mother”? At Fox, “Big” accounted for nearly 27% of the studio’s ticket sales.

As the big studios vie for the attention of studios this year, analysts expect the small independent studios to continue to be squeezed out. Final box-office results from last year show that the independents are steadily losing their share of the box-office dollar.

The major studios don’t make most of the movies in the United States, but they do make most of the money. Last year, independent studios produced 377 movies; the studios made 134. But the independents sold only 8% of all movie tickets, down from nearly 10% in 1987.

“The most important factor (in last year’s box-office results) is the decline of the independents’ market share,” says Dennis I. Forst, senior analyst for Security Pacific Merchant Bank. In the coming year, Forst predicts “more of the same, if not worse.”

Most of those tickets were for sequels to popular horror films like New Line’s “Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” Galaxy’s “Halloween 4” (which accounted for all of that studios revenues) and New World’s “Hellbound: Hellraiser 2.”

The Battle For Box-Office Bucks 1987 Paramount 20.9% Disney 14.3% Warner 13.1% Orion 10.9% Fox 8.9% Universal 7.5% Others 24.4% 1988 Paramount 15.2% Disney 19.4% Warner 10.3% MGM/UA 10.5% Fox 11.7% Universal 9.9% Others 23%