NEW KID ON THE BLOCK : You Want a <i> Whole</i> Movie by <i> When</i> ?!?

When Paramount Pictures Chairman Brandon Tartikoff took over the studio reins in July, all he wanted for Christmas was a hit family film.

No problem, said production group president David Kirkpatrick and production president Gary Lucchesi at one of the first meetings to discuss new projects with their new boss. “We have this script called ‘All I Want for Christmas’ and we can have it ready for Christmas of 1992.”

Tartikoff remembers saying, “Why not ‘91? Christmas 1991.”

Describing that scene in his office, Tartikoff says his two executives, “just looked at each other. . . .”

(Could that have been an early warning sign of a shake-up in the film division’s top management?)

Tartikoff wasn’t commenting during an interview last week. But the trade paper Daily Variety reported that Lucchesi and Kirkpatrick may be out so Tartikoff can install his own team.)

Tartikoff recalls telling Kirkpatrick and Lucchesi “that at NBC, where I had just come from, we could initiate a movie in July and have it on the air by premiere week in September.”

Still, even the four months the two Paramount executives had--from start of pre-production to release in theaters on Nov. 8--is considered lightning speed by Hollywood feature filmmaking standards. As things stand now, they’ve made their deadline. But, as a result, some in the industry are wondering if the studio’s movies of the future will begin resembling movies of the week.

And because of the priority placed on “All I Want For Christmas” by the former NBC Entertainment Group chairman, not to mention that it is the first film to come out under his stewardship, the industry seems to be giving the movie more than a passing glance.

“Imagine our surprise to get the go-ahead for this Christmas,” says producer Marykay Powell, who had been counting on a 1992 holiday target. She recalls the change made it impossible to use the actual time and place of the movie--winter shooting and New York City. It also squeezed the allowable shooting time into something like 33 days. “But remember, ‘Casablanca’ was shot in 30 days,” she says.

Powell acknowledges that Tartikoff’s background in TV may be “a justifiable concern to some” who see him imposing TV standards on feature filmmaking. But she supports the idea that some movies can be made far short of the leisurely Hollywood schedule of about 50 days, plus months of post-production work.

“There are some pictures that can conform to this kind of schedule and others that cannot. But in the new economy, wouldn’t it be a good thing to find some pictures that can work this way?” Short schedule or long, Powell says the production “spent the same amount of money that we would have spent otherwise, $12 million,” which is less than half the amount of the average cost of a major feature film.

The movie, about two children who plot to get their estranged parents back together for Christmas, has a cast that includes Harley Jane Kozak, Ethan Randall, Thora Birch and two actors best know for their TV work, Jamey Sheridan (of NBC’s “Shannon’s Deal”) and Kevin Nealon (of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”), plus smaller parts played by Lauren Bacall and Leslie Nielsen.

Besides bringing a TV time frame to “Christmas,” Tartikoff also brought in director Robert Lieberman, whose background is primarily in TV (“thirtysomething” and “Gabriel’s Fire”) and TV writer Richard Kramer (“thirty-something”), who gave “added dimension”--in Tartikoff’s words--to original writer Thom Eberhardt’s “great script.”

“We sacrificed winter shooting,” Powell says now, “but we figured this was Hollywood, after all, and we could handle that.” She says production designer Herman Zimmerman had already considered how the New York-set film could be made in Los Angeles, and special-effects man Al Lorimar had created the snow for the L.A. locations. “Having produced the movie ‘White Fang’ in Alaska,” Powell says, “our snow was better looking than the real stuff.”

Tartikoff isn’t concerned about skeptics. “I defy anyone to say it’s not a ‘movie’ due to its budget. . . . I’m very proud of this picture, one that can be embraced by kids and parents. It’s good, wholesome fun.”

He points to the 10 movies he has greenlighted so far (the first was the comedy “Wayne’s World,” based on characters from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”) and specifically to “Patriot Games,” a $45-million project starring Harrison Ford, as illustrating the range of movies he will make.

One reason for the early opening of “All I Want for Christmas” and the primary reason for the production rush, Tartikoff says, is that Paramount wants to get a jump on the competitive holiday moviegoing season, which includes its own “The Addams Family,” opening Nov. 22. “Besides, there’s only so many weeks you can play a Christmas movie,” he says.

In addition to opening the movie nationwide, Tartikoff says Paramount will take the rare step of opening “Christmas” in a number of overseas markets simultaneously to take advantage of the season.

“We’ll have a couple of weeks clear,” he predicts, “before such other family films as ‘My Girl’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ open. The timing is also several weeks before Godzilla comes”--Tartikoff’s reference to Steven Spielberg’s all-star fantasy, “Hook,” opening Dec. 11