Hot ‘n’ Bothered Over Summer : Movie Studios Are Already Sweating Over ’94 Season’s Release Schedule

Hollywood’s film companies are still talking about the summer movies.

Not the record-shattering $2.1 billion the movie industry generated at the box office during the summer just ended. Rather, the shaping of summer 1994.

At this early point studio executives are already penciling in their movies, with an eye to what the other guys are doing. If they have a Western or a comedy, it’s likely they’ll avoid opening on the same weekend as Billy Crystal in “City Slickers II” and Eddie Murphy in “Beverly Hills Cop III”--or risk being massacred at the box office.

About a month ago, theater exhibitors were getting signals that Warner Bros. would release its highly anticipated “Maverick,” starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner, on Memorial Day weekend. But as just one example of the kind of “jockeying” that goes on by the major film distributors, this month Warner Bros. will only say that the movie will be released “sometime” in the summer season.

That’s because, as the speculation goes, the studio wants to avoid going head-to-head on the big moviegoing Memorial Day weekend with what also are expected to be two big sequels to very popular films.

It’s also the same weekend that Universal Pictures--the “Jurassic Park” distributor with the summer track record to beat--plans to release what likely could be another box-office heavyweight, “The Flintstones,” based on the animated TV comedy series. In this live-action theatrical version, John Goodman plays “modern Stone Age” family man Fred Flintstone and Rick Moranis is his sidekick neighbor, Barney Rubble.

And look for a film from the Walt Disney Co. around that time too, according to Dick Cook, Disney’s distribution president. But don’t look for a specific title just yet, he adds. When Warner Bros. does decide to schedule “Maverick”--not to mention its other Western epic, “Wyatt Earp,” which bills Kevin Costner--those two films may, in turn, set off a chain reaction of summertime changes by other studios that may want to avoid a showdown with the likes of the high-profile cowboys.

“Memorial Day is an awfully good weekend that has supported multiple hits before, and we think we’re in good shape with ‘City Slickers II,’ ” said Columbia Pictures Distribution President Jeff Blake. As far as Blake is concerned, “City Slickers II,” which is a Castle Rock Entertainment production, is locked in for that weekend.

“You just have to go in there and duke it out . . . a lot of movies can do a lot of business,” said Castle Rock partner Martin Shafer.

“We have said Memorial Day for ‘The Flintstones’ . . .,” said Tom Pollock, chairman of MCA Inc’s Motion Picture Group (Universal Pictures), “ . . . and that’s what we’ll do, unless we change it,” he mused.

Pollock said the “Flintstones” date is somewhat carved in stone, since Universal has a promotional tie-in with the McDonald’s Corp. that is “twice as big as the one for ‘Jurassic Park’ and is set to begin Memorial Day.”

The combination of “City Slickers II,” “Beverly Hills Cop III” and “The Flintstones” will be a clash of titans, said 20th Century Fox Executive Vice President Tom Sherak, who is planning to avoid the Memorial Day fray for now. “When you have three films with broad base of appeal and all going for the same audience, something will have to give,” he predicted.

Few people in the exhibition business believe the triple whammy schedule will survive. “It’s just the studios staking out their turf,” said one executive at a theater circuit. “By the time spring rolls around, much will change.”

Part of the strategy is to schedule movies to avoid the potential mega-hits. The industry rightly steered clear of June 11 this past summer (“Jurassic Park”) and wrongly of June 19 (“Last Action Hero”), “but who knew?” the executive added.

No one single film jumps out this year, said a variety of the executives interviewed for this article.

“Nothing that I’m aware of has ‘Don’t go near it’ written on it,” said Columbia’s Blake. “At this point all you can do is identify the films that will be available and make sure they have some juice in them.”

After Memorial Day, the next big summer weekend will begin on Friday, June 17. On that date, Disney plans to open its latest animated musical, “The Lion King.” And Paramount Pictures will send out Harrison Ford in the latest adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, “Clear and Present Danger.”

But wait, there’s more. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has penciled in the Macaulay Culkin comedy “Getting Even With Dad” for the same weekend--at least that’s the plan for now.

Indeed, June promises to be crowded. Among the many penciled in for June, but awaiting specific dates: Columbia will release director Rob Reiner’s “North” toward the end of the month. Disney has “I Love Trouble,” starring Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte. Paramount has “Lassie” down for about June 10. June may also see Universal release Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn.”

TriStar Pictures has only one on the schedule as of now--a comedy with Nicolas Cage, Bridget Fonda and Rosie Perez titled “Cop Tips Waitress $2 Million,” but it has not committed to a date. And the studio hopes that an untitled project (formerly “Him”), with Norman Jewison directing Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei, and still shooting in Italy, will be ready for summer.

The next potential summer battleground is the July Fourth holiday weekend. Fox’s Sherak said he’d like very much to stake a claim to this heavyweight ticket-selling weekend with the big-budgeted “True Lies,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a top-secret government agent. “But it depends right now on the production schedule,” he said.

MGM plans “Blown Away,” with Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones, for July Fourth too.

But beyond that, none of the major film distributors had specific dates for many of their movies. Among them: Fox’s “The Chase” with Charlie Sheen; Paramount’s “Forrest Gump,” starring Tom Hanks; a Pauly Shore movie from Disney; Columbia/Castle Rock’s “Little Big League”; and Universal’s “The Shadow,” with Alec Baldwin and John Lone, “The River Wild” with Meryl Streep, and “Timecop,” with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Warner Bros., like Hollywood’s other studios, mostly declined to name specific dates, let alone months for its summer movies. But the studio has made no secret about its plans for June, 1995: “Batman 3.”