A Scary Box Office Puts Fear Into ‘Halloween 5’ Producer

Moustapha Akkad, producer of “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers,” is accustomed to instilling fear into his audiences. Now, his audience is frightening him.

“Halloween 5” opened Friday, just a couple months after two other horror sequels, New Line’s “Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child” and Paramount’s “Friday the 13th Part VIII--Jason Takes Manhattan,” opened to disappointing ticket sales.

“There is this nervousness,” says Akkad. The producer is crossing his fingers that the reason for these results is not audience boredom with the genre. Maybe it was the quality of the films, he says, or the fact that both opened during one of the most competitive summers in recent movie history.

“We hope it’s one of these reasons,” says Akkad. He’ll find out in the coming weeks, as the box-office results for “Halloween 5” roll in.

The Syrian-born Akkad is on his own with “Halloween 5”: He doesn’t have a big studio, like Paramount, or even a major independent movie company, like New Line, behind him. Two years ago, Akkad bought the rights to the film from his original partners--including the first film’s director, John Carpenter; its co-writer, Debra Hill; and its executive producer, Irwin Yablans.

At the time, the partners were squabbling about the future of the “Halloween” series, in part because of the disappointing box-office take of “Halloween 3,” which adopted a completely different story line than its predecessors. According to Entertainment Data Inc., “Halloween 3” sold $14.4 million worth of tickets in 1982, while “Halloween 2” had taken in $25.5 million at U.S. theaters the year before.

“After ‘Halloween 3,’ we couldn’t agree on how to proceed,” says Yablans. “We had become rich and comfortable, and suddenly everyone was an artist.”

The rights to “Halloween” went on the auction block, but no major studio bid, not even Universal, which had distributed the second and third installments. Akkad came in and topped bids by several independent companies.

“For four years, we didn’t do any ‘Halloweens,’ ” says Akkad. “But I believed in it. It’s not a genius creation or anything. But whenever Halloween season comes around, audiences want something like this.”

The first “Halloween,” and the only one directed by Carpenter, was one of the most financially successful independent movies ever made. The production budget was only $300,000 and it grossed about $47 million at American theaters alone.

The villain of “Halloween” is Michael Myers, who as an 8-year-old murdered his sister after catching her in bed with her boyfriend. Much of the first “Halloween” takes place 15 years later, after Myers has grown into a murderous figure known as the Shape. The film starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a virginal high school girl that Myers pursues, and Donald Pleasence as Myers’ psychiatrist.

The first “Halloween” was so popular that it spawned competitors, two of which have consistently drawn larger audiences. New Line’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series, with the increasingly famous Freddy Krueger as its central villain, began in 1984 to ticket sales of $25.5 million, according to Entertainment Data. Its audience peaked in 1988, when the fourth installment grossed $49.3 million.

Last summer’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child” grossed $21.6 million, which--because of the low cost of production--is disappointing only when compared to the previous installments.

“We’ve been scratching our heads (about the ticket sales),” says Mitch Goldman, president of New Line’s distribution arm, “and the bottom line is: We think that it may have been released too soon after the last one. I don’t think it was the picture, the concept, or the advertising.” New Line is already moving ahead on the next installment of “Elm Street.”

Paramount’s “Friday the 13th” series opened in 1980 to ticket sales of nearly $40 million, according to Entertainment Data. The eighth sequel, which also opened last summer, grossed only $14.3 million.

Paramount executives could not be reached for comment about the film’s box-office results. A studio spokeswoman said no decision had been made about whether Paramount will produce another “Friday the 13th.”

The headquarters for “Halloween” is Akkad’s tiny company, Trancas International, run out of a suite of offices on Sunset Boulevard. The budget for the film has grown to $5.5 million, still less than a third what the average Hollywood movie costs. “Halloween 5” is directed by a film maker from Switzerland, Dominique Othenin-Girard, and stars Pleasence and Danielle Harris.

Akkad came to the United States in 1954 at 19, graduating from the theater arts program at UCLA and earning a masters degree from USC. Since then he has directed, as well as financed, films. Among his credits is the 1981 “Lion of the Desert,” starring Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed.

“Halloween gives me the financial independence” to make and direct big-budget epics, says Akkad.