So Much for the Family Trend? : Movies: Most entries for young audiences vanished quickly this summer. Filmmakers worry what it means for the future of PG-13 projects.

Producer Lauren Shuler Donner admits she was “totally disappointed and surprised” by how quickly her summer movie, “Free Willy 2,” slipped out of the theaters. “I cried,” she says.

Rick Stevenson, director of “Magic in the Water,” was perhaps even more surprised at how poorly his picture did this month. After all, early screenings generated “response that was almost ‘E.T.’ numbers,” he says.

Similar sob stories are recited by the makers of what may have been a record number of family-friendly, box office-empty films over the last several months: “The Indian in the Cupboard,” “Tall Tale,” “Fluke,” “A Kid in King Arthur’s Court,” “The Amazing Panda Adventure,” “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie,” “Arabian Knight,” “Operation Dumbo Drop,” “A Little Princess” and “The Baby Sitters Club” have all performed poorly at the box office.

Only the offbeat, cross-generational “Babe,” “Casper,” and the foolproof “Pocahontas” (though less successful than Disney predecessors like “The Lion King”) could be considered winners at the box office.

And don’t think the industry hasn’t noticed. “I do get the feeling that the studios are less interested right now in PG pictures,” says Paul Maslansky, who watched his man-becomes-dog movie, “Fluke,” disappear within minutes.

“I think studios will think twice after this summer,” concurs Donner. “Family films now need some other element, either great special effects like ‘Casper’ or being incredibly original like ‘Babe.’ ”

Surely they are keeping a close eye on the last remaining family films of the season, including the recently released “Angus,” “The Big Green,” which opens Sept. 29, Disney’s computer-animated “Toy Story,” and the Robin Williams movie, “Jumanji,” coming mid-December.

Meanwhile, the industry is left to ponder the reasons why the summer of ’95 fell so flat, among them:

* The baby boomers’ babies are getting older and wiser. “If there’s a movie that appeals only to kids, parents will do everything to avoid it and wait for the video,” explains Cris Meledandri, president of Fox Family Films. “And kids are more sophisticated than given credit for.”

Sure enough, the two most popular movies of the summer turned out to be “Clueless” and “Mortal Kombat,” both made with much older kids in mind. “Kids these days want to be a little older,” says Donner, “and ‘Clueless’ plugged in to that. For the boys, they all felt hipper seeing ‘Mortal Kombat.’ ” So younger siblings are happily dragged along to movies skewed for older audiences (think Jim Carrey). But would big brother go with little sister to see “Arabian Knight”? As if!

* There were too many too fast. There always seemed to be another movie just around the bend and theaters got restless. “If theater owners could let movies like ours play for a month, at all times of the day, we’d do good business,” says Peter Almond, one of the producers of “The Baby Sitters Club.” “But they want to take the crapshoot to see if they can do better on something else. We opened No. 7 out of town and they made a projection that we’d go down rather than up.”

Theater owners concede the summer was a crowded one for all films and that family fare took the hardest hit. “There just isn’t room for 15 family films in the marketplace in the course of a summer,” says Howard Lichtman of the Cineplex Odeon chain. “With so many new ones coming up, there was tight squeeze and we had to consider the facts that those films generally can’t play past 9 o’clock. We also charge less for children so there is the need for more dollars.”

* A lesser crop? While most the filmmakers are happy with their films, many received unusually scathing reviews (though positive ones didn’t help “A Little Princess” or “The Indian in the Cupboard”). “Kids who are being catered to have a lot of choices now,” says Roger Birnbaum, a producer of last summer’s hit “Angels in the Outfield” and the upcoming “The Big Green.” “They have to be good movies because kids want that E-ticket ride.”

* Bad timing. “Casper” had those effects and product tie-in campaigns, but it also benefited by being first out of the summer gate. In contrast, “Magic in the Water” director Stevenson feels his film suffered for its timing. “The wisdom of releasing us on Labor Day was questionable,” he says. “40% of kids had already gone back to school.”

Roger Birnbaum feels “The Big Green,” whose story deals with a scrappy soccer team, will benefit for having a clear playing field. “There’s not another family film in sight,” he says. Bad timing of a different sort proved fatal for “Power Rangers.” Basically, it was a year late capturing that trend. (“Five months is more like it,” says Fox’s Meledandri, who claims the film ultimately will make money worldwide but hit a “wall in terms of age groups.”)

* Then there’s the oft-blamed craft of marketing, which surely played some role in the fact that so many of these films simply never created interest before, during or after release. Birnbaum says of his own “Tall Tale,” which had a very short life: “It was a good film but a bad idea for a movie. The whole thing felt too much like homework, and it looked to kids like another time, another place. It also featured mostly adult characters.”

Another Disney-sponsored film, “Operation Dumbo Drop,” had audiences even more confused. It sounded like a film for kids, and there was an elephant, but wasn’t that Vietnam in the background? Everyone stayed away.

Stevenson says the trailers for “Magic in the Water” were probably too soft, especially in the summer of “Clueless.” They appealed to goodness, not hipness,” he laments.

Hip and good are what the makers of “Jumanji,” an urban adventure about a kid getting lost in a board game and coming back 25 years later as Robin Williams, want audiences to feel. But its trailers are generating mixed responses. Kids seem ready to laugh at Williams but instead they see him being chased by wild animals in what appears unusually intense goings on.

“The movie is extremely funny,” insists producer Scott Kroopf, “but a lot of the Robin Williams you see is more of his ‘Dead Poets Society’ persona.” His own fear is the holiday arrival of one of those hipper, raunchier movies made with older-kid audiences in mind: “Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls.”

So filmmakers have to rethink exactly who will go to their movies and why: “The key is that too many movies have been made to take your kid to,” says Meledandri, “rather than movies that bring out the kid in you.”

They also need to rethink strategy.

“I salute the studios for addressing the family audience,” says Lichtman of Cineplex Odeon, “but throwing out 15 family films close together is setting yourself up for disaster. They have to realize that people are parents 12 months out of the year and while kids may be out of school in the summer, they are also in camps and enjoying the good weather. There are plenty of other windows of opportunity for family movies besides the summer.”