MGM Pays Big Money for an Unpublished Novel : Movies: Hungry for a hit after a series of box-office bombs, the studio grabs ‘The Day After Tomorrow,’ by a little-known screenwriter.

In a signal to Hollywood that it remains a player in big money bidding wars, MGM has secured movie rights to “The Day After Tomorrow,” an unpublished thriller about an American doctor who stumbles upon a neo-Nazi conspiracy in Europe.

The lengthy manuscript ignited the interest of filmmakers last week when Little Brown & Co. and Warner Books, both divisions of Time Warner, obtained hard-cover and paperback rights for about $2 million--a record for a first-time, unknown novelist.

MGM, which has had box office disappointments in recent months, agreed to pay $750,000 to author Allan R. Folsom to write the screenplay of his book and another $750,000 should the film be made. Folsom is a California screenwriter who has only a handful of television credits.

The novel centers on an American surgeon who as a boy witnesses his father’s murder and years later stumbles across the killer in a Paris bar, according to producer Richard D. Zanuck, who has a development arrangement with the studio. What follows is a complicated plot involving a neo-Nazi conspiracy. The novel is set in Paris, London and Switzerland, he added.

“I think this establishes MGM as a player in the big book-buying market,” Zanuck said. “Obviously, what MGM needs are some big, important pictures that work on an international basis. I think this is the kind that will do that.

“You need to start somewhere,” he added. “I think this is an effort. It indicates that they have the resources. People who had the impression that MGM was close to death now have to think twice.”

Alan Ladd Jr., co-chairman of MGM, said this was the second big purchase of a literary property that the studio has made in the past two weeks. The other was a screenplay called “Getting Even With Dad,” a comedy that went for $500,000.

“We’ve never stopped being a player,” Ladd insisted.

Ladd said that MGM plans to release 15 movies this year--up from “11 or 12” last year.

If any studio needs a box office hit, it is MGM. The beleaguered studio recently released “Body of Evidence,” the suspense thriller starring Madonna and Willem Dafoe, which received mostly negative reviews and as of last weekend grossed only $12.4 million. Last year, MGM also had dismal returns for “Criss Cross” ($3 million) and “Of Mice and Men” ($5.1 million).

Zanuck said he plans to go to New York in two weeks and begin mapping out a marketing campaign with the publishers of “The Day After Tomorrow.” He said he hopes it will be similar in scope and strategy to the highly successful book-and-movie campaign for his 1975 classic “Jaws.” In that case, he said, both Universal Pictures and the publisher devised a marketing plan that relied on identical images on movie posters and book covers of a shark rising toward a woman swimming.

“That one image represented ‘Jaws,’ ” Zanuck said. “We’re going to do the same thing here.”

The deal to acquire Folsom’s book was finalized Friday night amid intense bidding by various studios, according to Ladd. MGM’s bid was conducted by Ladd along with Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck, with agent Marion Rosenberg doing the negotiating for the author.

The deal had a whirlwind nature to it. Zanuck said he began receiving copies of the 927-page manuscript by fax and overnight express on Tuesday while he was attending a ski race with his two sons in Sun Valley, Idaho. By Thursday, he said, he had read the manuscript and knew he wanted to make the film.

“I was so excited and thrilled by the book that I wanted to close out the deal right away,” he said. “(Rosenberg) wanted to give other people a chance to read it over this weekend but I didn’t want to see that happen. We moved very very quickly. . . . We only gave her 24 hours to react.”

Rosenberg could not be reached for comment Sunday.