Girding for Movie Gridlock : Film: In a crowded marketplace, studio executives look for an edge as they position Christmas season releases. Elbowing for a piece of the holiday pie can get rough.

Halloween may be a month away, but in Hollywood it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the studios rush to lock their end-of-the-year films into holiday play dates.

The latest spate of jockeying took place following recent announcements that Paramount had pushed back the opening date of Francis Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III” from Nov. 21 to Christmas Day and that Disney had pushed forward the date of “Three Men and a Little Lady” from Christmas to Nov. 21.

“Everyone was waiting to see what (Paramount) was going to do with (‘Godfather III’),” said an executive at a competing studio. “No one wants to have to go against ‘The Godfather’ unless their film is directed at a completely different audience.”

If “The Godfather III” is the film event of the year, there are plenty of other contenders for box-office dollars. More than two dozen major titles, up about 20% from last year, are scheduled to open over a seven-week period from early November through Christmas Day.

Included are a dozen or more prestige titles that are considered, within the industry, to be candidates for Academy Award attention. Among them: “Godfather III,” Sydney Pollack’s “Havana,” Brian De Palma’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Sheltering Sky,” James Ivory’s “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” and Penny Marshall’s “Awakenings.”

The list of those films that would seem to have purely commercial ambitions includes “Kindergarten Cop,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood’s “The Rookie,” and the sequels “Rocky V,” “Three Men and a Little Lady” and “Look Who’s Talking Too.”

As one studio publicity chief put it, “It’s more than competitive--it’s going to be murder.”

At theaters, it may be more a case of gridlock. Although there are about 24,000 screens in the United States and Canada, the glut of movies will be hard to accommodate. Films aimed at broad audiences usually open with between 800 and 2,500 prints; simple math dictates that some titles will be squeezed out.

“Something’s got to give,” said John Krier, president of Exhibitor Relations. Krier predicted that some films scheduled for release this year will be held back. “It’s a case of who’s going to give in first.”

For the moment, distributors are standing firm.

“This is the first Christmas I can remember where nobody wants to move, nobody’s flinching,” said Tom Sherak, executive vice president at 20th Century Fox.

“My feeling is that everybody believes in their product,” Sherak continued. “And given what’s out there, if you don’t have the goods, you’ve got to get out of the way, because it’s going to be tough. It’s going to look like a Pac-Man game. You know how that little yellow guy goes around and eats everything in his way?”

The key to finding the power pill and avoiding being swallowed up?

“You avoid head-to-head competition,” said Si Kornblit, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Universal Pictures. “This year, everyone sort of looked at everyone else, and then dropped their movies on the schedule. You won’t find similar movies going against each other.”

Thus, Tri-Star is tentatively booking its baby movie--”Look Who’s Talking Too”--for Dec. 7, 17 days after Disney’s “Three Men and a Little Lady” opens. Warner Bros.’ animated version of “The Nutcracker” is scheduled to open Dec. 19, more than a month after Disney’s animated “The Rescuers Down Under.” Fox’s macho action film “Predator II” follows MGM/UA’s “Rocky V” by a week (“I’ll be happy to get all the people who go to see ‘Rocky V’ come see our movie the next weekend,” said Fox’s Sherak).

The positioning of certain movies is crucial not only to the holiday grosses, but for the overall release strategy of the movies. Some films are, by the nature of their subjects, slow starters and don’t figure to hit their stride until critics and Oscar campaigns weigh in.

The boasting--or bluffing--has already begun. Disney executives say they moved “Three Men and a Little Lady” up a month because preview audiences were nuts about it. Fox officials claim that “Home Alone,” a John Hughes-produced comedy, will be “the sleeper hit of the season.” Columbia is spreading the word that Rob Reiner’s “Misery” is the one that will leap out of the pack.

More than bragging rights are at stake. The long hot summer is Hollywood’s Big Season, accounting for about 40% of a year’s overall receipts, but the 10-day, year-end holiday often sees the most intense moviegoing all year. In 1987, ticket sales during that period totaled about $160 million, or 3.76% of the year’s gross.

“What we have here is a very large pie, and everybody wants to have a piece of it,” said David Forbes, Orion’s president of domestic distribution.

In recent years, the beginning of the Christmas season has steadily moved forward and post time now comes before Thanksgiving. This season, Orion will get off first with “Dances With Wolves,” a three-hour Western directed by and starring Kevin Costner. Orion is hoping that, like its “Platoon” of a few years back, “Dances With Wolves” will gain steam after a limited early release and perform all the way through Christmas.

“The idea is to build an awareness, and a want-to-see factor,” said Orion’s Forbes, adding, “However you release your pictures, your goal is for them to have legs.”

Following is a tentative--accent on tentative-- schedule of the 1990 Christmas movie schedule:

“Dances With Wolves” (Orion), Nov. 9. Limited.

“Rocky V” (MGM/UA), Nov. 16. Wide. The aging Rocky trains a would-be successor, then has to teach the upstart a real lesson in the ring.

“The Rescuers Down Under” (Disney), Nov. 16. A sequel to Disney’s 1977 animated hit.

“Home Alone” (Fox), Nov. 16. A 7-year-old boy defends his home against two novice crooks while his parents are away on vacation.

“Three Men and a Little Lady” (Disney), Nov. 21. Emile Ardolino (“Dirty Dancing”) directs this sequel to “Three Men and a Baby.”

“Valkenvania” (Warner Bros.), Nov. 21. Dan Aykroyd directs Demi Moore and Chevy Chase in a comedy about a yuppie couple in a strange town.

“Predator II” (Fox), Nov. 21. The sequel, minus Arnold Schwarzenegger, finds the monster in L.A.

“Misery” (Columbia), Nov. 30. Adapted from Stephen King’s novel about a best-selling author being terrorized by a fan. Rob Reiner directs James Caan and Kathy Bates.

“Almost an Angel” (Paramount), Dec. 7. Paul Hogan is a burglar who thinks he’s an angel.

“The Rookie” (Warner Bros.), Dec. 7. Veteran cop Clint Eastwood is paired with greenhorn partner Charlie Sheen.

“Look Who’s Talking Too” (Tri-Star), Dec. 7. Director Amy Hecklering and stars Kirstie Alley and John Travolta reteam for the sequel that features the off-screen voices of Bruce Willis, Roseanne Barr and Richard Pryor.

“Come See the Paradise” (Fox), Dec. 12. Limited. Alan Parker’s interracial love story set against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

“Havana” (Universal), Dec. 12. Limited. Sydney Pollack directs Robert Redford and Lena Olin in a love story set against the Cuban Revolution.

“Edward Scissorhands” (Fox), Dec. 14. Limited. Tim Burton follows “Batman” with a contemporary Frankenstein tale about a man-made boy (Johnny Depp) whose life is sheer luck.

“The Sheltering Sky” (Warner Bros.), Dec. 14. Limited. Debra Winger and John Malkovich on a quest for self-discovery.

“Russia House” (MGM/UA), Dec. 14. Sean Connery is a British publisher caught up in intrigue and romance (with Michelle Pfeiffer) in Moscow.

“Bonfire of the Vanities” (Warner Bros.), Dec. 14. Brian De Palma directs and Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith star in this adaptation of the Tom Wolfe bestseller about a married Wall Street broker whose affair triggers a political crisis in New York.

“The Nutcracker” (Warner Bros.), Dec. 19. The classic story retold in animation.

“Awakenings” (Columbia), Dec. 20. Robin Williams is a doctor who awakens a ward of comatose patients, Robert De Niro among them. Penny Marshall directs.

“Kindergarten Cop” (Universal), Dec. 21. Detective Schwarzenegger goes undercover to catch a drug dealer.

“Hamlet” (Warner Bros.), date uncertain. Limited. Mel Gibson is the Dark Prince and Glenn Close is his mom in Franco Zeffirelli’s screen adaptation of the Shakespeare play.

“Mermaids” (Orion), around Christmas. Limited. A mother-daughter relationship drama starring Cher and Winona Ryder.

“Alice” (Orion), around Christmas. Limited. A comedy about a wife going through experiences at a critical period of her life. So says the secretive Woody Allen, who directs but does not star.

“Scenes From a Mall” (Touchstone), Dec. 25. Limited. Paul Mazursky directs Woody Allen and Bette Midler in a comedy about a couple who end up spending their 15th wedding anniversary in a mall.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” (Miramax), Dec. 25. Limited. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward play a Kansas City couple looking back on four decades of marriage. Directed by James Ivory.