Christmas With ‘Godfather’ : Movies: Following a weekend screening, Paramount executives decide not to delay the Coppola epic until Easter.

All the magazine editors who took a leap of faith by featuring stars from “The Godfather, Part III” on their November and December covers can relax. So can the 1,800 theater owners who guaranteed a minimum 12-week run for the movie: Paramount Pictures executives announced Monday that they will release “Godfather III” on Christmas Day after all.

In doing so, Paramount defied the common wisdom in Hollywood, which held that its perfectionist director, Francis Coppola, would refuse to turn over the 2-hour, 40-minute epic in time for a Christmas release. Even Paramount’s own marketing department was poised last week for either a Christmas or Easter release.

But after Coppola and Paramount executives saw the film last weekend at a San Francisco screening, they agreed that it could be released on Christmas Day. On Sunday, the clock ran out for any changes that Coppola could make. In the coming weeks, technical work on the film will be completed and 1,800 prints will be produced for shipment to theaters in the United States.

The decision to make the Christmas Day schedule--thereby assuring that the film qualifies for this year’s Academy Awards--represents a personal coup for Paramount Pictures’ chief executive Frank Mancuso, who has made “Godfather III” one of the highest priorities of his administration. Paramount executives have been trying to persuade Coppola to make a third installment ever since 1974, when “The Godfather, Part II” was released. But the director refused to commit until February, 1989, when he started writing a script with Mario Puzo, author of the best-selling novel that inspired the first two movies.

“Godfather III”--which stars Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Diane Keaton as his estranged wife, Talia Shire as his sister and Andy Garcia as an illegitimate Corleone--has had a troubled time getting to the screen. The production was marred by real-life lovers’ quarrels between Pacino and Keaton and a last-minute decision by Winona Ryder--then suffering from exhaustion and a severe sinus infection--to drop out. Coppola then fueled a near revolt on the set by tapping his daughter Sofia to replace Ryder in the role of Michael Corleone’s daughter.

Set in 1979, two decades after “Godfather II” left off, “Godfather III” explores Michael Corleone’s attempts to make his family’s investments legitimate and his Mafia family’s ties to the Vatican.

Originally budgeted at $44 million, the total cost--which included months of filming on location in Italy and New York--has risen to close to $55 million.

One and a half years in the making, “Godfather III” is one of the most talked-about films of the decade. The first two “Godfather” movies won Academy Awards for best picture and have brought in revenues of about $800 million from theaters, TV, and sales of videocassettes. Competing studios are so anxious about the “Godfather III” that an underground video of an early cut of the film has made the rounds of several executives’ screening rooms, according to industry sources.