The Long, Not-So-Hot Summer : Industry Hopes Year-End Films Revive Sagging Box Office

OK, so moviegoers didn’t rewrite the box-office record books this summer. There’s still the fall and Christmas seasons.

That’s the way insiders in the film business are looking at the big picture, hoping that the upcoming crop of movies will make up for the slump in movie admissions. So far, 1991 is about 3% behind last year’s totals, and about 6% off 1989, the industry’s best year ever.

The movie industry grossed an estimated $1.6 billion between May 17 and the just-concluded Labor Day weekend, the fourth highest summer period ever, but off about 11% from last summer, according to John Krier of Exhibitor Relations, a company that tracks box-office data. The biggest summer ever was 1989--the year of the smash hit “Batman,” when the industry soldslightly more than $1.8 billion worth of tickets.

But some anticipate a rebound. “We think late September and Christmas will be especially good moviegoing times,” predicted John Neal, senior vice president of the 2,400 screen Denver-based United Artists Entertainment Co. Among them, Barbra Streisand’s “The Prince of Tides,” Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” and Garry Marshall’s “Frankie & Johnny” with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer.

“By no means was this summer a disaster, as some had predicted at the start,” Krier said. “While business may have been off for summer, the year so far has been good for the exhibition industry due to a strong first quarter,” which included big audiences for “Dances With Wolves, “Home Alone” and “Silence of the Lambs.”

Krier said the industry places so much emphasis on June, July and August grosses because this the period that often accounts for as much as 40% of the entire year’s box-office.

The special effects-laden, $90 million-budgeted “Terminator 2” with Arnold Schwarzenegger wound up as this season’s number one film, selling $183 million worth of tickets in the U.S. In summer 1990, the Schwarzenegger star vehicle “Total Recall” grossed$117 million, and placed second, only slightly behind the hit comedy “Ghost,” which did $126 million in business by summer’s end.

Three movies topped the magic $100-million mark this summer. In addition to TriStar Pictures release of Carolco’s “Terminator 2,” there was the Warner Bros. release of Morgan Creek’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” starring Kevin Costner ($151 million), and the Columbia Pictures release of Castle Rock Prods.’ “City Slickers,” starring Billy Crystal ($113 million). Last year, four films topped $100 million: “Ghost,” “Total Recall,” “Die Hard 2” and “Dick Tracy.”

But the moderately good summer box-office news overall was offset by reports of the movie industry’s rising costs and smaller profit margins, as well as a weak late July and August, in which box-office grosses fell a whopping 25%, according to estimates made Tuesday by the trade newspaper Daily Variety.

This summer, there was no surprise hit like last year’s “Ghost” to rejuvenate audience interest. In fact, the surprise this year was the disappointing results of movies that many in the industry predicted would draw far greater audiences than they did. Among them, “Dying Young,” “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” “The Rocketeer” and “Backdraft.”

The public’s interest in moviegoing fell so much that late summer truly became the dog days for Hollywood. Many of the new films were almost instant casualties. Among them: “V.I. Warshawski,” with Kathleen Turner; “Return to the Blue Lagoon”; “Delirious,” with John Candy; “Mobsters”; “Regarding Henry,” with Harrison Ford; plus a lot of others.

“There haven’t been the big follow-up pictures late in the summer to keep the momentum going from ‘Terminator 2’ ” said Neal of United Artists Entertainment.

The flock of flops, however, shouldn’t have been surprising, said Daily Variety box-office analyst Art Murphy in an interview. “The studios are harvesting a crop this summer that includes a lot of the mediocrities greenlighted at the end of a big box-office year, 1989. Everybody OKed them because the studios were flush with money and they figured, ‘How much can we lose?’

“Then, 18-months later (the typical lag time for making a movie) it’s summer 1991 and the Rosemary’s babies are born.”

For more than 10 years the industry has come to expect the summer season to be heralded by blockbuster-style Memorial Day weekend openings in the tradition of “Star Wars” and “Back to the Future” and their subsequent sequels. But as Memorial Day 1991 arrived, there was no big anticipated sequel, and no film with a easily grasped high concept.

The result was that summer got off to a very shaky start. “What About Bob?,” starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, did so-so business in its opening but by summer’s end wound up in sixth place with a gross in excess of $60 million. Then came the unimpressive opening weeks of Ron Howard’s fire department melodrama “Backdraft,” the dismal performance of “Hudson Hawk” with Bruce Willis and the slow-but-sure opening of the hard-to-sell, but critically praised “Thelma and Louise.” All over Hollywood, the mood turned glum.

But along came “City Slickers” and “Robin Hood,” and business took off. Paramount’s “Naked Gun 2 1/2” arrived late in June and then fireworks hit with the arrival of “Terminator 2” over the Fourth of July weekend.

For a few weeks, it looked as if summer business was headed to a strong finish. Strong numbers greeted Disney’s reissue of the 30-year-old “101 Dalmatians,” which took in $55 million to become the second-highest grossing animated film ever (after Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”). Also strong was the season’s one major release that was a serious film, “Boyz N the Hood,” despite an opening that was marred by violence.

Later, Disney/Touchstone’s “The Doctor,” starring William Hurt, also joined the limited ranks of the serious films that garnered attention.

The August release of “Hot Shots” with Charlie Sheen, “Doc Hollywood” with Michael J. Fox and Kenneth Branagh’s “Dead Again” saved the month from becoming a total box-office wipe-out.

Hollywood’s emphasis on box-office numbers can be deceiving when figured on a movie-by-movie basis. At the top of this summer, for instance, roughly 45 major releases were announced, worth an aggregate investment of roughly $1.8 billion--based on an average costs of $40 million for production and marketing costs. Even at a superficial glance, this summer’s ticket sales of an estimated $1.6 billion don’t quite cover the investment, and most certainly won’t cover the cost once the theater operators deduct their share of the grosses.

But as industry analysts such as A. D. Murphy point out, typically the producers and distributors hope to recoup only a portion of their investment--perhaps as little as 20%--at the U.S. box office. “We see the films come and go from the marketplace. But they look at films in terms of their five-to-seven year shelf life,” Murphy said.

On the statistical average, he said, distributors and producers know they will regain their investment, and then some, with income from international box office, cable, broadcast TV, home video and other related markets such as publishing and music.

In the case of “Terminator 2,” despite its huge budget and marketing costs, Murphy said Carolco, the film’s producers, “are well on the expected curve.” The film’s gross, approaching $200 million, means that rentals (the money that goes to distributor TriStar) will be about $100 million. Murphy suggested that even after TriStar subtracts a hefty portion to cover its distribution fee, Carolco will be left with an amount that amply exceeds 20% of the movie’s cost.

“When you add in the income from all the other markets, they’re home.”