‘Batman 2’: When $145 Million Is Not Enough : Sequel’s ‘Short Legs’ and Hollywood’s Lukewarm Summer

Question: When is $145 million in box-office grosses not enough?

Answer: When the movie is “Batman Returns.”

The way summer was supposed to unfold, in the script that Hollywood’s executives wrote earlier this year, the public’s appetite for moviegoing would begin building in mid-May. Then it would gain momentum Memorial Day weekend, get a huge lift from “Batman Returns” and slow down as the public turned its attention to the Summer Olympics.

The executives decided to open “Lethal Weapon 3” ahead of the summer pack. They bet “Alien 3” could be the big lure for the Memorial Day weekend. They felt the romantic “Far and Away” with Tom Cruise could be an alternative to action and science fiction. And with deliberate twists and turns, they all steered clear of June 19--the date that Warner Bros. had claimed for the debut of its huge “Batman Returns,” the sequel to 1989’s monster hit “Batman.”

Most of this scenario played out as planned. And there was at least one surprise: “Sister Act,” the high-concept, low-budget Disney/Touchstone Pictures comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg that this weekend will cross the magical $100-million mark at the box office.

And, as expected, “Batman Returns” had an enormous opening weekend and broke box-office records. The $60-million production quickly passed $100 million in grosses and now stands at $145.4 million--the biggest total of any film this year.

But despite the success of the comic-book action picture, at this same point in their respective releases, the original “Batman” had sold $187 million worth of tickets--or about $42 million more than this summer’s sequel.

And now, after one month in theaters, business has been falling off quickly, last weekend down 44% from the previous weekend.

Many in the theatrical exhibition business had hoped the film would do a bit better in the long run. They wanted it to be the locomotive that would put the public in a mood for a whole season of moviegoing. Much of their expectations were based on the popularity of the first “Batman,” which wound up with $250 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales--the sixth highest ever.

Insiders now believe “Batman Returns” will wind up far short of that--about $170 million to $180 million by the time the movie plays out.

“It obviously hasn’t had the legs that Batman did,” said Barry Reardon, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution. “But I never thought in my life that we could top ‘Batman.’ Usually if you do two-thirds of what the original did, you’re doing well.” Of course, he added, “You’d always like the gross to be a little higher.”

Jeffrey Logsdon, managing director of institutional research for Seidler Amdec Securities in Los Angeles, said the “Batman” sequel “may end up a little disappointing.” He noted that Wall Street in general expected the film to have performed stronger and for a longer period.

But an executive in the exhibition business had a different perspective. “When people talk about disappointment about ‘Batman Returns,’ it’s all relative. It’s only disappointing when it’s compared to not going to $250 million,” said Howard Lichtman, executive vice president of Cineplex Odeon Corp., the Toronto-based theater chain. “But compared to other films that are out there, it’s a definite blockbuster.

”. . . I’d take a $145-million ‘disappointment’ any day.”

What is perhaps a more revealing comparison for the two movies than grosses is actual tickets sold. In those terms, “Batman Returns” is running roughly 25% behind “Batman.”

Using the average cost of tickets in the United States, as calculated by the Motion Picture Assn. of America ($4.89 in 1992 versus $4.44 in 1989), the sequel has drawn 29 million admissions, versus 42 million for the first film at this same point in their release.

With demand for “Batman Returns” fading, and the halfway point of the lucrative summer moviegoing season behind, Hollywood finds itself with mixed, but mostly upbeat feelings. Box-office has been good, but the big question now is summer’s second act. What happens during and after the Olympics?

Most in the industry would just as soon forget about the box-office slump of last August, when few new movies performed well in the marketplace. The slump was all the more pronounced because it was preceded by the torrent of grosses for last year’s box-office champ, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which had debuted the July 4 weekend. Could that drop-off happen again?

“There is a great deal of anxiety in the industry about how the rest of the summer will go, especially after the last few weeks,” said Tom Sherak, 20th Century Fox executive vice president, who described the box-office since July 4 as being in “a sort of free fall.”

Sherak said the “good news is that there are a lot of new titles to come in August and every year at least one or two will come along to get the industry into September. The bad news is that no one sees anything that stands out at the moment.”

At this point in 1990, for instance, what turned out to be the top summer hit, “Ghost,” had just opened. Last summer, August produced only two moderate hit films, “Hot Shots” and “Doc Hollywood.”

“So far, this has been a typically front-loaded summer,” said John Krier, the owner of Exhibitor Relations Co., Inc., a firm that tracks box-office data for the industry. “The distributors once again scheduled the big titles for the opening months, just like last year.”

So far this summer, the strategy has worked, Krier said. The top 10 movies have generated grosses of $743.3 million against $659.4 million a year ago for the same number of leaders.

This summer’s No. 2 box-office hit so far has been the action-oriented “Lethal Weapon 3” with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson--another Warner Bros. movie that has $135 million in receipts to date.

The rest of the top 10 this summer are: Disney/Touchstone’s “Sister Act” ($97.5 million); Paramount’s “Patriot Games” ($72 million); Columbia’s “A League of their Own” ($54 million); 20th Century Fox’ “Alien 3” ($53 million); Universal’s “Far and Away” ($52 million); Paramount’s “Boomerang” ($47 million); Universal’s “Housesitter” ($46 million), and Fox’s “Unlawful Entry” ($37 million.)

“It’s been a very good summer relative to the last two (summers),” said analyst Logsdon. Both the summers of 1990 and 1991 declined a bit from the all-time record summer of 1989.

“We haven’t seen all the big business we’re going to see this summer,” Logsdon added, noting that the next few weeks will not be indicative of the second half of summer.

Indeed, with the start of the two-week-long Barcelona games, film industry insiders are bracing for a bigger than usual box-office slowdown. Only five major studio releases were scheduled to open in the next two weeks.

“No one’s really quite sure what the Olympics will mean,” Sherak said. “I guess it will depend on what kind of success the U.S. team has.”

In the case of Fox’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” starring teen heartthrob Luke Perry, Sherak said the strategy is that it is a teen movie. “It’s young, it’s (rated) PG-13. And the feeling is that the teen audience will want to go to the movies and not stay at home to watch the Olympics.”

“There’s no way the last weeks of summer can be favorably compared to the beginning,” said Greg Rutkowski, AMC Theaters’ West Coast operations vice president, but he added that there are still “a lot of good films in the marketplace.”

In particular, Rutkowski cited the continued popularity of “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid,” and titles to come such as the Clint Eastwood film “Unforgiven,” as well as “Death Becomes Her” and “Single, White, Female.”

Theater owners across the nation are thinking along those same lines. “Now what they’re hoping for is a movie with legs, legs, legs . . .,” box office analyst Krier said. “One that has staying power for August.”

Jane Galbraith contributed to this article.

1992 Summer Box-Office Wilt This summer’s box office started fast, but seems to be fading as the season progresses. The week-by-week summer box-office grosses for all movies released in North America in the last four years, with the peak generally around the July 4th weekend. Totals for the Summer 1992: $1.219 billion (to date) 1991: $1.717 billion 1990: $1.933 billion 1989: $2.107 billion Source: Variety Research: Exhibitor Relations Co.