Coming to a Theater Near You in ’92 : Film Industry Looks to Spring

The Golden Globe nominations for 1991’s movies won’t come out until Dec. 27.

This year’s Oscar nominations won’t be announced until Feb. 19.

And Hollywood hasn’t even finished releasing this season’s movies.

So what is one of the hot topics in film industry circles?

1992’s movies.

The talk comes amid a background of cloudy economic realities and budget tightening. Orion Pictures Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, leaving question marks about the fate of its scheduled films. And the new year may see the Screen Actors Guild go on strike by June and feature film production come to a screeching halt as a result.

There has also been the unpleasant downturn at the box office this year, putting overall grosses slightly behind the record levels of 1989 and 1990. And budget tightening is taking hold to off-set increasing costs. In one recent example, director Spike Lee, now shooting his film “Malcolm X” starring Denzel Washington, reportedly clashed with Warner Bros. about the size of his production budget, estimated at $40-million.

Still, there is optimism for the coming year.

This winter and early spring, moviegoers will be offered a number of features that were delayed, for various reasons, from this year. Among them are the comedy “Mom and Dad Save the World,” with Jon Lovitz and Teri Garr; the Roland Joffe drama “City of Joy,” with Patrick Swayze and Pauline Collins, and “Shining Through,” a World War II spy drama featuring Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith.

Among the new films: the thriller “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle”; the urban drama set in the world of underground amateur boxing, “Gladiator”; Richard Gere and Kim Basinger in “Final Analysis”; Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco in “Medicine Man,” and Michael Douglas in “Basic Instinct.”

There is little buzz on most of the films. And the studios don’t usually comment on why a movie, such as “Mom and Dad Save the World,” which Warner Bros. had once set for summer release and then pushed back to autumn, is now slated to open in winter.

But theater owners who saw one upcoming film were buzzing about the comedy “My Cousin Vinny” starring Joe Pesci. After seeing it at a convention, many gave it “lavish” praise, according to a report in the National Assn. of Theatre Owners monthly newsletter.

As the industry looks to 1992, there is a growing sense that the nation’s recession is trickling down to Hollywood.

Expansion plans for some studio facilities are on hold. The major exception is Sony Pictures Entertainment’s expansion and refurbishing of the Culver City home for its Columbia and TriStar divisions (formerly the MGM lot).

In terms of money spent on moviegoing, it’s not uncommon to hear worries about the recession causing consumers to stay at home more. “Business isn’t what it was last year,” said Pacific Theaters vice president Milton Moritz, attributing the cause as much to the films in the market, as to the state of the economy.

On the other hand, he said: “Where else do you go out of the house for a few hours or six or seven bucks? If you want to go out, motion pictures represent the least-expensive entertainment.”

In recent weeks, the industry’s spirits have been buoyed by the strong box-office performances by such films as “The Addams Family,” “Star Trek VI,” “My Girl” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

However, Hollywood’s revived spirits were tempered somewhat by the announcement on Wednesday that the financially troubled Orion Pictures Corp. is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Not that anyone was shocked by the announcement--Orion had been skirting creditors for months. But the news did crank up anxiety levels in Hollywood about what the future holds for other, even less influential companies.

“The studios have become at least verbally cost conscious,” said entertainment analyst Jeffrey Logsdon of Seidler Amdec Securities in Los Angeles. “But Hollywood will continue to invest the money in star talent,” he predicted.

With the shutdown of Orion and the decline of MGM/Pathe, Logsdon said there are two less competitors for talent. “On the other hand, you have Columbia/TriStar and Universal which have been pretty aggressive in acquiring talent.

“As the year begins, you have what appears to be a new cost-conscious philosophy in place at Paramount and perhaps at Disney.”

Besides holding the line on spending, studio decision makers appear to be playing a balancing act as well--seeking a mix of higher costing “event” films balanced against smaller budgeted ones. Paramount, for example hedged it’s $30-million investment in “The Addams Family” against its “All I Want for Christmas,” which cost $12 million. In both cases, the films appear on the money-making track.

In 1992, Disney’s “Newsies,” which some sources place at $35 million in production costs, will be balanced against the low-budget “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” which one informed source at Disney said was made for below $10 million.

“It’s as if the studios are taking the Jeff Katzenberg memo to heart,” said one source who did not wish to be identified.

The reference was to a 28-page internal memo by Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, that leaked to the press almost a year ago but remains a topic of conversation and magazine articles.

The “Katzenberg memo,” as it has come to be called, received wide attention in the press in January because of its unusual candor and controversial discussion of Hollywood business practices. It included Katzenberg’s regrets about some of the effort and expense that went into Disney’s big-budgeted “Dick Tracy.”

But in the memo, Katzenberg also warned his fellow Disney executives that the industry was falling prey to a blockbuster mentality and is not recession proof.

“The way things are now . . . stripped of its juicier prose, you can see the sense it makes,” said the source.

Whatever the strength of the early winter box office, it will be based on the strength of holdover movies from the Christmas season, according to Daily Variety’s box-office analyst Art Murphy. “That’s the same explanation why this fall’s business was so terrible--because there were not enough carry-over hits from summer.

“The box-office gyrations have been rather spectacular in 1991,” Murphy added. “The first months of ’91 were strong because of the Christmas holdovers (“Home Alone,” “Dances With Wolves”) and one or two very big hits that opened late in January (“Silence of the Lambs” and “Sleeping With the Enemy”). Early summer was strong, but then there was the drop.”

So Hollywood paces and waits for 1992.

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