Film Company, Theaters Hope for Payback With Interactive Movie : Technology: The feature, the first of its kind in wide release, will let audiences make plot selections using joysticks.

A New York company is hoping to launch a new type of movie experience next week when it releases “Mr. Payback,” a tale of a revenge seeker for hire.

The title character is available to flatten the tires of illegally parked cars, force an evil boss to lie in a bed of worms or administer electric shocks to a would-be bicycle thief. But exactly which jobs he takes and how he carries them out is up to members of the audience, who vote for their selections by pressing buttons on high-tech joysticks attached to the armrests of their seats.

“Mr. Payback,” the first widely released interactive movie from Interfilm Inc., will open next Friday in Los Angeles and 19 other cities around the country. The movie has 350 separate segments, and which ones are played and in what order depends on the choices of the audience--virtually assuring that the same version of the film will never be seen. The creators of the movie--or cinematic game, as they prefer to call it--hope the many possible variations will keep people coming back for more.

The stakes in this novel effort are high, and not just for Interfilm. Hollywood executives, makers of interactive CD-ROM games and a handful of companies that build parts for Interfilm see “Mr. Payback” as the start of what could be a lucrative new genre.

“A lot of eyes are focused on how this title is received,” said James Weil, director of research at Unterberg Harris in New York. “They want to see whether or not there’s real money to be made in interactive gaming.”

They have reason to be optimistic. Video games did a bigger business than movies in 1994, grossing more than $17 billion in arcades and game sales last year, compared to $5.4 billion in theater box office receipts.

Interfilm introduced its format for interactive movies two years ago with “I’m Your Man,” a prototype that had a limited run in New York and Los Angeles. It drew 15,000 patrons and the attention of Sony New Technologies, which agreed to finance and distribute “Mr. Payback” and another Interfilm next year.

That helped William Franzblau, Interfilm’s chief operating officer, convince theater owners to spend $85,000 to equip their auditoriums with the Interfilm system.

So far, 44 theaters have been outfitted with pistol grips, video projectors and Interfilm’s six-foot-high “black box” that contains four laser disk players, a CD-ROM and a powerful personal computer. Hundreds of other theaters are poised to make the commitment if “Mr. Payback” is a box office success, Franzblau said.

No one believes they will replace traditional movies, but many expect interactive films to play a role in the multiplex of the future, which is expected to resemble a small amusement park.

“This technology has a legitimate chance at being one of the players in the evolving entertainment market,” said John Neal, senior vice president for entertainment technology for United Artists Theatre Circuit, which has retrofitted 10 of its theaters for “Mr. Payback.”

With a video arcade and bowling alley, the Pacific Regency 8 in Lakewood resembles the cineplex of the future. Interactive movies could be just another of the multiplex’s permanent attractions, and it has retrofitted an auditorium for the purpose.

If “Mr. Payback” proves popular, makers of CD-ROM games are expected to get into the act, producing versions of their home games for use in theaters. After all, said Alan Cole-Ford, executive vice president for strategy and development at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, an Interfilm is really “a live-action CD-ROM game on a movie screen played with a bunch of people.”

An odd assortment of companies, including an Illinois joystick maker and a New Jersey defense contractor, stand to benefit if the Interfilm system is a success.

But first Interfilm must prove it can live up to its potential, said Keith Mullins, managing director at Smith Barney in New York: “Neither Hollywood nor Wall Street is willing to make a significant bet until there is some evidence that it doesn’t go the way of 3-D movies or Smell-O-Vision.”