How Hot Was Hollywood’s Summer? : Movies: With ticket sales approaching $1.8 billion, this looks to be the third biggest season on record.

With one weekend to go before the summer movie season ends, there’s a sigh of relief in Hollywood: In the midst of a nationwide recession, it wasn’t a bad summer.

But was it a good summer?

That depends on how you figure.

In conversations with industry leaders on both sides of the screen, assessments of the summer are subdued.

Thanks to summer, the movie business has caught up after a slow spring to within about 8% of where overall box-office grosses were this time last year. Still, the number of tickets sold this year is estimated to be 4% off 1991’s pace.

Box-office results from Memorial Day to Labor Day--the time of year when ticket sales are at their peak--are expected to make this summer the third best on record. Estimates from a variety of sources place the overall gross box office figure at somewhere below $1.8 billion for the United States and Canada, but ahead of last summer’s $1.6 billion. This summer is again off the pace of the all-time record summer of 1989, when the original “Batman” opened and slightly more than $1.8 billion worth of tickets were sold.

But comparing this summer with 1991 is problematic because the season this year includes one more week of grosses. If that week--the one that includes the upcoming Labor Day weekend--is subtracted, there would be virtually no difference between this summer and last.

The season’s grosses have been fueled by such popular $100-million-plus theatrical attractions as “Batman Returns,” “Lethal Weapon 3” and “Sister Act,” as well as “A League of Their Own,” which is expected to cross that mark soon. The summer also received an additional boost from a group of lesser-grossing major hits, including such star-driven movies as Paramount Pictures’ “Patriot Games” with Harrison Ford and “Boomerang” with Eddie Murphy, as well as Warner Bros.’ “Unforgiven,” directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

By comparison, three films surpassed $100 million last summer: “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and “City Slickers.” And the rest of that summer’s Top 10 grossing movies generated less business than this year’s Top 10.

On the downside, summer 1992 has seen a substantial number of box-office disappointments, a euphemistic term used to describe movies that don’t measure up to the exaggerated expectations of advance publicity and word of mouth.

Among many, the low-budget “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (which has grossed $14 million to date) and a reissue of Walt Disney’s classic “Pinocchio” ($18 million to date) simply failed to generate wide or continuing consumer interest, despite what appeared to be their apparent commercial appeal. On the other hand, two high-budgeted movies fared poorly as well. The sequel “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid” has grossed $53 million, while the Tom Cruise vehicle “Far and Away” has brought in $57 million--no small sums. But both did nowhere near the amount that the producers had hoped for. Expectations were also higher than proved to be the case for the Brian De Palma thriller “Raising Cain” (grossing $18 million), the Damon Wayans comedy “Mo’ Money” ($37 million) and the black comedy “Death Becomes Her” ($46 million), starring the trio of Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis.

The summer produced only one moderately successful action picture, TriStar’s “Universal Soldier” with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, while such murder genre films as “Raising Cain” and “Whispers in the Dark” bombed. Among the art-house movies, “Howards End” played strongly all summer, and the ranks have increased lately with the openings of “Enchanted April,” “A Brief History of Time” and “Mistress.”

*

New Jersey-based Loews Theatre chain chairman A. Alan Friedberg asked, “How many businesses would be happy to see an erosion of their business of only 8% in the midst of a widespread recession? If we were not in a recession, with the same movies we had, we might have had an even stronger summer. To say this is your third best under these circumstances isn’t so bad.”

“Few people expected the summer to produce a record,” said John Krier, the owner of Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc., which tracks box-office data. “It’s been a bit disappointing, especially considering this summer includes an extra week.”

Krier said the fast box-office fade of the hits contributed to the flatness. He said Warner Bros. saturated the market with such films as “Batman Returns” by opening it on more than 2,800 screens--a number that covers nearly every community in the United States and Canada. “Everyone had a chance to see it in its first weeks,” he said. And repeat business was minimal.

Summer fell into a usual pattern with most of the hits coming before the July 4 holiday, Krier said. After that, the dog days set in.

Indeed, late summer hits usually are a rarity. The few recent examples were the hugely popular “Ghost” in 1990, last year’s “Hot Shots” and the current “Unforgiven.”

Paramount Pictures’ president of worldwide distribution Barry London, feels the summer is, “pretty strong, though not all of the films have held in the marketplace as long as we would have liked.” The studio’s “Patriot Games,” stayed around long enough to gross $81 million while “Boomerang” confirmed Murphy’s drawing power.

But Howard Lichtman, an executive vice president of the 1,600-screen Toronto-based Cineplex Odeon Theatres chair, said “the third-place showing this summer masks the fact that the summer was disappointing. We really anticipated a much stronger summer. The early hits didn’t have the long runs that we had hoped for.”

The surprises, he said, were “Sister Act,” “the classic, feel good movie that no one could know would have blockbuster status. We also didn’t anticipate that ‘A League of Their Own’ would be as big as it is.”

But Lichtman termed “Alien 3” a “disappointment” since the sequel delivered a lower gross than the first two.

On “Batman Returns” he said: “Some said it should have done more business. Yes, it would have been great if it had grossed $250 million like the first. But I’ll take $150 million any day of the week.”

From the studio view, the thinking, generally, is that too much emphasis is placed on box-office grosses since they reflect only half the story. Nowadays, the other half of theatrical revenue comes from international markets.

Universal Pictures President Tom Pollock claimed that “Far and Away” will do double the business it did domestically. “Overall we expect to do $130 million worldwide. I think that is very good result. You will not find 15 movies this year that will do $130 million,” he said.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. Chairman Joe Roth acknowledged his studio’s “Alien 3” ’ grossed a “disappointing” $55 million, but he predicted the movie will be “highly profitable” in the end, and will gross more than $100 million internationally.

Domestic box-office grosses are only the “bellringer” for the “five- to seven-year” life of feature films, said Art D. Murphy, box-office analyst for the trade newspaper Daily Variety. Books stay open on each film as they go through their domestic and international theatrical, video and television markets, he said.

Murphy believes that the $1.8-billion summer gross he is predicting for summer will set the stage for a strong box-office finale at the Christmas season. “The year to date total is pulling about equal to last year, so the end of the year will make the year,” he said.

Warner Bros.’ dynamic duo of “Batman Returns” and “Lethal Weapon 3” made it the most successful studio in the summer market.

“Batman Returns” cost $55 million and has so far sold $158 million in tickets. Its opening weekend on June 19 rewrote movie record books with a shattering $45 million sold in its first three days. The comic-book-based spectacle is the sequel to 1989’s “Batman,” which grossed $245 million.

Meanwhile, it was Warner’s “Lethal Weapon 3,” starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, that ignited the summer season in mid-May. It has generated $141 million to date and performed the unusual: equaled the gross of its predecessor.

“Lethal” ranks as the summer’s No. 2 film. The studio’s release of Clint Eastwood’s dark Western “Unforgiven” is still generating income with $55 million to date.

Disney’s No. 2 rank is largely attributable to the surprise success of the $25-million production of “Sister Act,” a comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg that has so far generated $126 million.

Disney’s very low-budget (some say around $6 million) teen comedy “Encino Man” grossed nearly $40 million.

“It was a cookie cutter of the summer before,” said 20th’s Roth. “The same number of tickets were sold. There were high expectations at first and then after July 4 the business slumped. Either people are just programmed to come between Memorial Day and Fourth of July, or we in the business don’t make enough good movies to fill up the summer.”

Summer’s Top 10 Hits

With a week remaining before the official end of summer, the 10 top-grossing films in the United States and Canada appear to be as follows. In addition, the top 10 films of last summer are listed; last summer’s box-office gross was lower than this summer’s estimates.

THE TOTAL PICTURE

Estimates place the total summer 1992 gross box-office figure at just under $1.8 billion for the United States and Canada, ahead of last summer’s $1.6 billion.

1992

RANK TITLE GROSS (millions) 1. Batman Returns $158.1 2. Lethal Weapon 3 $140.9 3. Sister Act $126.2 4. A League of Their Own $97.2 5. Patriot Games $81.0 6. Boomerang $66.0 7. Far and Away $57.2 8. Housesitter $55.4 9. Unforgiven $55.1 10. Alien 3 $54.9

1991

RANK TITLE GROSS (millions) 1. Terminator 2 $183.1 2. Robin Hood $150.5 3. City Slickers $112.7 4. Naked Gun 2 1/2 $83.3 5. Backdraft $75.2 6. What About Bob? $61.7 7. 101 Dalmatians $55.6 8. Hot Shots! 55.2 9. Boyz N the Hood $49.3 10. The Rocketeer $44.8

Source: Exhibitor Relations Co.