A Box-Office Drought? It’s Terminated : Movies: ‘Terminator 2’ reassures film industry observers who were worried over the summer season’s slow start.

It was like the arrival of rain in water-starved California.

Motivated by the opening of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” moviegoers flooded the nation’s theaters over the Independence Day weekend, bringing a sigh of relief to the film business.

The sequel starring Schwarzenegger, reprising his 1984 role as a cyborg from the future, brought in $52.3 million over the five-day holiday period from Wednesday through Sunday, according to final figures released Monday. Other hit films generated large ticket sales, too: “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and Billy Crystal’s comedy “City Slickers” all did well.

Industry sources placed the overall gross for the Top 10 movies at well over $115 million for the long weekend.

Hollywood had been longing for a “Terminator” to create a box-office explosion. So far this year, ticket sales in the United States have topped the $2.2 billion mark--off about $50 million from the same point in 1990, according to Art Murphy, the longtime industry analyst for Daily Variety. But the surge in business over the just-completed holiday period is expected to partially offset that.

The question Hollywood is asking, however, is will the surge continue?

“Any predictions of disaster for the summer are premature,” was Murphy’s dryly observed assessment.

“After a decade of summer box-office seasons starting with tried-and-true sequels, we’ve come to expect a certain level by this point. The industry has typically front-loaded the summer,” Murphy said. “But that just didn’t happen this year. Only now are we seeing the sequels.”

“Our holiday weekend was substantially better than last year’s, “ said Greg Rutkowski, vice president of West Coast operations for the large 1,600-screen AMC Theatre circuit. “The summer is playing out about as we expected it would. It will be at least as good as last summer, maybe even about 10% better.”

Rutkowski said that despite a slow start, “the predominately non-sequel summer has really given us films that appear to have some legs.” The reference was to the continuing popularity of “Robin Hood” and “City Slickers.

“This coming weekend looks strong,” AMC’s Rutkowski, observed. He said the arrival of Walt Disney’s “101 Dalmatians” will “fill a niche in the market for children’s films.” He called the sneak previews last weekend for Harrison Ford’s “Regarding Henry,” which opens Wednesday, “strong.” He said tests also looked good for “Boyz N the Hood,” the drama set in South-Central Los Angeles.

Harold Mintz of Cinemascore, a polling service that interviews moviegoers, said “When you get a lot of sellouts for ‘Terminator,’ people say, ‘Now that we’re at the movies, let’s go see something else.’ ”

Mintz reported that “Terminator 2” had one of the largest “can’t wait to see” scores of any film he could remember. “Eighty-two percent of the people we polled said they couldn’t wait. Only 6% said they just ‘came along’ with others. When we did polling for ‘Robin Hood’ we found 61% couldn’t wait to see it, and at that time, that number blew us away.”

In the past, the summer box office got its initial kick from similar films with high “want to see factors” like the “Indiana Jones” or “Back to the Future” series. This year, the Memorial Day weekend arrived with two expensive productions, Ron Howard’s “Backdraft” and the Bruce Willis vehicle “Hudson Hawk”--the former not setting any box-office blazes and the latter doing a quick fade-out from theaters.

In the box-office results for the just-completed long weekend, three of the top five grossing movies are sequels--”Terminator 2,” “Naked Gun 2 1/2” and “Problem Child 2.”

“Terminator 2” distributor Tri-Star Pictures produced audience test results that showed an unusually high percentage of females--42%--in the audience for an action film. The audience age broke down to 47% under 25 and 53% 25 and older.

According to John Krier of the box-office data service Exhibitor Relations, the opening night was second only to “Batman” in 1989. That film went on to gross $70 million by the end of its first seven days and holds the record for reaching the magical $100 million mark faster than any other film.

Independence Day Weekend Box Office

Weekend Gross/ Screens/ Weeks in Movie (Studio) Total (millions) Average Release 1.”Terminator 2” $52.3 2,274 1 (Tri Star) $52.3 $23,002 2.”Naked Gun 2 1/2” $16.8 2,378 2 (Paramount) $43.2 $7,064 3.”Robin Hood” $14.7 2,369 4 (Warner Bros) $97.7 $6,205 4.”City Slickers” $11.2 2,171 5 (Columbia) $74.6 $5,158 5.”Problem Child 2” $7.6 1,464 1 (Universal) $7.6 $5,220

SOURCE: Exhibitor Relations Co.