Box Office Off to an Even Bigger Year in ’96

The movie marketplace is booming, with box-office grosses up for 19 straight weeks over the equivalent stretch a year ago. And, experts say, some strong offerings during the traditionally slow weeks after Easter may keep this year well ahead of 1995’s record-breaking pace.

Though 95 pictures have opened this year compared with 82 in 1995, the difference, industry executives say, lies in quality rather than quantity. “Volume alone doesn’t increase box office,” said Barry London, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. “It’s not about the number of movies but the number the public wants to see.”

MGM/UA’s “The Birdcage,” a remake of the French farce “La Cage aux Folles,” has been the year’s only runaway hit, but diverse offerings such as “Broken Arrow” and late-1995 releases “12 Monkeys,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and the downbeat “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Dead Man Walking” also have performed well. Holdovers have fared much stronger this year than those in the marketplace a year ago.

“Birdcage” tested very well, according to Larry Gleason, head of distribution for MGM/UA. But the breadth of the response came as something of a surprise. A film portraying “two very strange families, one of them gay” was expected to be urban fare, he said, yet small towns nationwide have taken the movie to heart.

“Though the audience was originally older and female, we’re now getting young males--even getting families with kids,” Gleason said. “Robin Williams is a well-loved performer who makes people feel safe. And since we moved the movie up from Memorial Day, ‘Sgt. Bilko’ is the only comedy we’re up against.”

Capitalizing on considerable repeat business, “Birdcage” is the first movie since “Toy Story” to land in the top spot for four successive weeks--a feat that would have been considerably harder to pull off during the summer and Christmas crunch.

“The Hunt for Red October” (March 1990) and “Indecent Proposal” (April 1993) demonstrated the commercial potential of a spring release. Yet in the coming weeks, experts say, crowds may slack off.

“Though this is now a 52-week-a-year business, the stretch between Easter and mid-May is usually a dry spell,” said Warner Bros. distribution head Barry Reardon. “Though box office could drop off dramatically before ‘Twister’ and ‘Flipper’ kick off the summer on May 17, pictures such as ‘Primal Fear,’ ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘Last Dance’ could reverse that trend.”

Had Meryl Streep walked off with a best actress Oscar for “The Bridges of Madison County,” Reardon planned to expand the number of first-run screens. When that scenario failed to materialize, he placed the movie in 429 “sub-run” theaters, houses charging only a dollar or two. The weekly gross of the movie, a mere $2,618 during pre-Oscar week, climbed to $161,000.

Box office for “Braveheart,” the big Academy Award winner, jumped 158% from pre-Oscar weekend to the one following the event. Home video shipments for the $75-million-grossing picture also increased. Still, the mileage gained by the 13th century Scottish epic--and by the other best picture nominees--was less than in the past.

“A best picture winner, on the average, takes in an additional $25 million,” said Dan Marks, senior vice president of product management for Entertainment Data Inc. “Even the losers pick up an additional $5 [million] or $6 million, which is an impossibility this year. Because the nominees have been playing so long, they have very little left. ‘Apollo 13’ isn’t even in the theaters and the fact that ‘Braveheart’ and ‘Babe’ are out on video doesn’t help.”

Like those of “The Postman (Il Postino)” and “Sense and Sensibility,” the numbers for “Babe”--a critically acclaimed fable about a talking pig--actually declined.

“We’re in 300 theaters compared to nearly 1,800 at its peak, but grateful there’s any business at all,” said Universal Pictures distribution chief Nikki Rocco of “Babe,” which came out on Aug. 4. “After we launched home video during pre-Oscar week, I expected the exhibitors to stop showing ‘Babe’ and keep the window clear. They’ve decided to stick with us, they say, because of the special nature of the film.”