Higher Rental Fees May Result From Sales Sag : Marketing: Orders for three new blockbusters have fallen far below expectations and that may cost the consumer.

Christmas in February and March?

The home-video industry certainly likes the idea. That’s why it’s been trying to extend the lucrative holiday-season sales business into winter. So far, though, the results have been far below projections.

Three low-priced titles due out this winter--Paramount’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (out Thursday), Warner’s “Lethal Weapon 2” (out next Thursday) and Disney’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (out March 16)--aren’t selling to retailers and distributors as well as expected. According to some industry estimates, the combined initial shipments may be 9 million to 10 million short of the earlier projections of 21 million or more.

These disappointing sales could very well halt the home-video companies’ surge to release blockbuster hits at the $23-$25 price range outside the Christmas-shopping season. So the prospect of being able to buy low-priced, smash-hit movies all-year-round is suddenly dim.

For the consumer, slow sales of these three movies may also, in some cases, translate into shortages. When stores buy conservatively, to save money and avoid surpluses, many invariably do not have enough copies to meet customer demand.

Higher rental prices may also result. The reasoning is that, to make up for these lost revenues, video companies may raise the price of rental cassettes this year. That increase, of course, would be passed on to the consumer.

“Expect a raise in rental prices before the end of the year,” said Mitch Perliss, purchasing director of the Music Plus chain. “These companies will raise the prices because they can do it and get away with it. They won’t have that money from the sales market so they’ll get it from the rental market.”

Traditionally, the industry has put out low-priced ($25) blockbuster movies, such as “E.T.,” “Batman” and “Bambi,” in early fall in time for the gift-buying season. In the last two years, video companies have shipped anywhere from 7 million to 15 million copies of each of these holiday titles.

Home-video companies prefer putting out blockbuster titles at low-price and doing a high-volume business because they can make more money than releasing it to the rental market, selling roughly 400,000 copies at a $90 retail price.

The problems that “Indiana Jones,” “Lethal Weapon II” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” are encountering are strictly the result of inflated expectations.

“These companies aren’t going to lose money,” said Peter Margo, executive vice president of the Palmer Video chain. “They’ll make piles of money on these titles--just a smaller pile than they figured.”

The primary reason for the overestimates is all the hype last fall surrounding Warner’s “Batman” and, to a lesser extent, Disney’s “Bambi.” Video retailers got an exaggerated sense of the strength of the home-video sales market.

“People had these incredible ideas about what the sales market would be,” said Meir Hed, co-owner of the Videotheque chain. “Because of the hype, retailers had these unrealistic expectations. They drastically overbought ‘Batman’ in particular and got burned.”

Added Eric Doctorow, Paramount’s senior vice president and general manager, “The big fall titles didn’t sell as much to the public as expected. There are still lots of copies out there. Now retailers are buying more conservatively--and more realistically. The titles that are coming out now are suffering because of what happened last fall.”

“Batman” is perceived in the industry as a failure because stores overreacted to Batmania. Roughly 13 million cassettes were shipped to retailers and distributors but, according to various estimates, anywhere from 2 million to 4 million remain unsold.

Most video retailers don’t like these low-priced titles anyway, since, to compete with discount stores, they have to sell the cassettes at such a low price that profits are slim. The disappointing business of these three winter releases in the sales market is indirectly a victory for the rental market--the backbone of the home-video business.