Turner’s ‘Gettysburg’ Beating Some Tough Odds : Movies: With only 200 prints, the four-hour release breaks the marketing rules, earning $7.5 million to date.

The movie is 4 hours and 18 minutes long . It’s about the devastating Civil War battle that left 50,000 Americans dead or wounded. It has no bankable box-office stars in the cast. And yet, “Gettysburg” has found an audience.

“It’s confounded the skeptics. It’s the little engine that could,” said Turner Pictures President Dennis Miller about the $14-million production that is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Killer Angels” and one of the most tragic events in American history.

After seven weeks of theatrical release, and with only 200 prints of the film in theaters scattered around the nation, “Gettysburg” has sold $7.5 million in tickets to date--a number that Miller expects will hit $10 million by New Year’s Day. The only other recent Civil War movie was 1989’s “Glory,” which received wide release in theaters and featured an ensemble cast led by Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington (who won the best supporting actor Oscar). It grossed $26.8 million.

But the “Gettysburg” figure to date is all the more impressive considering that many consumers are aware that Turner Broadcasting will air the film as a two-part miniseries next June. It doesn’t help grosses either that, at its unusually long length, a theater is able to show the film only two times per day. Not to mention that there are only so many moviegoers who are willing to commit to a four-hour-plus sit.

“You have to plan to see this movie,” said New Line Pictures president of marketing and distribution Mitch Goldman, referring to its unusual length, which is broken in most theaters by an intermission. “This is not a movie you drop in to see.”

Gettysburg seems to have struck a chord with the public in other ways. The novel has reappeared on bestseller lists, the companion book to the film is in a second printing and the Milan Records’ soundtrack of Randy Edelman’s film score is reportedly selling briskly.

“We expect that it will still hold on in theaters through the holiday season,” Goldman said. “Whenever a print comes off a screen, we have a waiting list of theaters requesting it.”

Goldman said the film’s length makes additional prints “very expensive to make. Besides, we’re in no hurry. This is not a normal kind of release pattern.” New Line plans to simply move the existing 200 prints around from theater to theater, without increasing the number.

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Goldman and New Line theatrical marketing president Chris Pula attributed the small, but steady interest in “Gettysburg” to advance work in mailing learning kits about the battle to 50,000 schools and flyers to historical groups, including Civil War re-enactor groups around the nation. As many as 5,000 Civil War re-enactors were used in the filming of the movie on the actual site of Gettysburg, Pa., which is now a national park.

“One of the most important things we did in the face of a long, historical period piece, was to put the film in a context that today’s audiences can relate to,” Pula said. Advertising campaigns established that nearly as many people died at Gettysburg in three days as died in 10 years of the Vietnam War.

New Line is distributing “Gettysburg” for Turner Pictures in a deal set before Ted Turner agreed to acquire the film company. Pula noted that another plus in the selling of the film was Turner himself, who took a personal interest in a film that no company would make for 15 years. “His appearance at press junkets on behalf of the movie generated several pieces in the press,” Pula said. (Turner plays a cameo role as a confederate soldier.)

Then there were splashy premieres for the film in Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles and at Gettysburg. And, as Turner Pictures’ Miller noted, “one of our strategic advantages is that we can use the related Turner TV networks to promote and advertise the film.”

The next steps for “Gettysburg” will be international theatrical release, beginning in February in England, and an Oscar campaign for the film itself. The video release of the movie is due in March.

The film, which was produced by Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme, in association with TriStar Television, has a cast including Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger and Martin Sheen.