As It Turns Out, Timing Is Everything

Is today the right day to release “Psycho”? Universal Pictures, which bungled its choice of date for “Babe: A Pig in the City,” is betting it hasn’t made the same mistake twice.

Even before Universal launched a hip ad campaign designed to attract young moviegoers, it tried to gain a competitive edge by securing the best possible release date for “Psycho.” Universal decided on Dec. 4 for two good reasons: “Scream” and “Scream 2,” two hugely successful teen horror films that were released in early- to mid-December.

Whether a film is a hit, especially in a packed holiday season, is closely tied in to one of the most arcane of all Hollywood arts--the jockeying for opening-day release dates. Picking the wrong date can almost destroy a film before it opens, as the “Babe” sequel illustrates.

For the outside world, the first sign that “Babe” was in trouble came on Nov. 16, when Universal abruptly canceled the film’s Los Angeles premiere, saying “Babe” director George Miller was still at work completing the movie. But as far back as mid-September, industry insiders sensed that Universal’s talking pig sequel, which arrived in theaters Nov. 25, was headed for the slaughterhouse.

In a little-noticed series of shifts, Paramount Pictures moved its Thanksgiving film, “The Rugrats Movie,” up a week to Nov. 20. Responding to that, Disney Studios made two moves. First, it took “A Bug’s Life,” which had been slated to open Nov. 20, and pushed it back to Nov. 25, where it would go up against “Babe.” Second, it moved “Enemy of the State” up to Nov. 20, pitting the Will Smith-starring thriller up against “Rugrats.”

The result was a disaster for “Babe.” Instead of going up against “Enemy,” which was geared to an older audience, “Babe” was matched against “Bug’s,” a film with strong reviews and word of mouth that was aimed for the same demographic as “Babe.” It was no contest: “A Bug’s Life” racked up a record $46.5 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, while “Babe” staggered to a lowly fifth-place showing at $8.5 million.

Although “Rugrats” easily bested “Enemy of the State” on the previous weekend, “Enemy” had such good word of mouth that it did almost as well in its second week as its first, putting it on a pace to top $100 million by year’s end.

“We thought that ‘Rugrats’ had a lot more drive in the marketplace than ‘Babe,’ so we put ‘Bug’s Life’ up against the weaker of the two movies,” explains Disney Chairman Joe Roth, who describes himself as a “big believer” in the impact of release dates.

Can ‘Psycho’ End Universal’s Bad Streak?

A rival studio marketing executive was more blunt: “When Disney moved ‘Bug’s Life’ to Thanksgiving you knew ‘Babe’ was in trouble. It was like watching a lion go in for the kill against a wounded lamb. It was a classic example of how a good release date can help a movie--and how a bad release can really hurt a movie.”

Universal, which ousted studio Chairman Casey Silver Monday after a woeful 18-month stretch of box-office failures--among them “Meet Joe Black,” “Primary Colors” and “BASEketball”--hopes to stage a comeback today with “Psycho,” director Gus Van Sant’s much-debated re-creation of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock horror classic.

Following the lead of Hitchcock, who made reviewers see the film in the theaters, Universal decided not to screen the film for critics. The strategy also allows the studio to minimize the impact of any negative reviews, which could affect opening weekend box office.

Until recently, the first half of December was considered a movie graveyard, since filmgoers were thought to be too busy attending holiday parties or Christmas shopping to make time for movies. The rules changed in 1996 when Miramax hit the jackpot with “Scream.”

“Everyone thought we were crazy,” recalls Miramax’s Mark Gill, the studio’s marketing chief at the time. “We got dozens of calls from people saying we were ruining a good movie. Variety ran a story saying it was the stupidest idea of the fall. It went against conventional wisdom, which was that the psychology was all wrong--you couldn’t release a horror film at a time of faith and healing.”

What Miramax discovered was that one key segment of moviegoers wasn’t busy shopping: young males, who made up the bulk of the original “Scream” audience. That’s why the two studio films that are in wide release in early December are both movies whose primary audience is young men: “Psycho” and “Star Trek: Insurrection,” which opens next Friday.

To ensure it had this weekend to itself, Universal wasted no time in planting its “Psycho” flag on Dec. 4.

The last thing Universal wanted was any competition for its “Psycho” date. In the first week of July, even before filming began, the studio ran a teaser trailer in thousands of theaters announcing the film’s release date. Universal knew “Psycho” would be preceded by several teen thrillers, including “Halloween H20” and “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”

A Strategy Calling for ‘First in the Marketplace’

But the stylish teaser, which adapted Saul Bass’ graphic title design from the original film, was designed to send a message: If there is one scary movie to see this fall, it’s “Psycho.”

“Since it was impossible to come out first, our basic objective was to make it appear that we were first in the marketplace, even if was just having the first trailer out,” explains “Psycho” producer Brian Grazer. “For me, everything revolved around creating an awareness in people’s minds that this was the movie to see.”

Using TV spots created by Intra-Link, one of the industry’s top trailer companies, Universal kicked off its campaign with a series of MTV-style ads that ran Sept. 10, aptly enough, on the MTV Video Awards. It also blanketed urban areas with billboards showing the silhouette of a woman in the shower, with the tag: “Check in. Relax. Take a shower.” It’s telling that the one piece of hard information the billboards offered wasn’t the title, but the film’s release date: “Coming December 4th.”

Each year studios stake their opening-date claims earlier and earlier. This Thanksgiving, New Line ran a teaser trailer announcing that it would open its “Austin Powers” sequel, “The Spy Who Shagged Me,” on June 11, 1999. Warner Bros. took out full-page trade ads this summer staking out the 1999 July 4 weekend for “Wild Wild West.” Disney just claimed Thanksgiving 1999 for “Toy Story 2.”

“The reason to do it early is to give pause to your competitors, to make them think, ‘Do I really want to be on that date against you?’ ” says Roth, who put “Armageddon’ on July 4, 1998--more than a year in advance of its release. “It’s the event movies that matter. No one cares that I’m releasing ‘The Other Sister’ on March 5. But when I see ‘Star Wars’ on May 22 and ‘Wild Wild West’ on July 4, I’m thinking, ‘Those are pretty good dates to avoid.’ ”

Successful dates become good-luck charms. “Scream 3” is already slotted for early December 1999. Since “Star Wars” was a Memorial Day hit in 1977, George Lucas has always released the film’s sequels on that holiday weekend. Disney always has a brand-name family film slated for Thanksgiving weekend.

“It’s a little bit of science and a lot of superstition,” says 20th Century Fox Domestic Film Group Chairman Tom Sherak. “Disney did well with young women a few years ago in late April with ‘While You Were Sleeping.’ So we started opening female-oriented films like ‘The Truth About Cats and Dogs’ and ‘The Object of My Affection’ in late April. If it works, you follow it. But if Joe Roth put a strong male-oriented film on that date, we’d move in a second. We’re not that superstitious.”

Grazer isn’t superstitious either. When it came to marketing “Psycho” he left nothing to chance. Knowing exhibitors have many trailers to choose from, he wrote them a letter, lobbying them to run his. He also gave a 45-minute presentation at a exhibitor sales meeting, screening TV spots and giving out posters.

“I sold the movie,” he says. “I pitched them as if I were a guy running for office.”

Teens normally don’t make moviegoing decisions until just before a film opens, but Universal felt “Psycho” was a special case. The film had to be positioned as cool and modern, not old and musty.

“The strategic goal was to take a 30-year-old black-and-white movie and make this new version feel sexy, scary and hip,” says Universal president of marketing Marc Shmuger. “We couldn’t wait until the week before the movie opened. We had to find a way to give our audience an early jolt of awareness.”

The ads accomplished one major goal: According to midweek research group tracking numbers, “Psycho” has good awareness and “definite interest” numbers, especially among young male moviegoers.

“The ads stirred people up, but we’re not feeling cocky by a longshot,” Grazer says. “I think we did our best to open the movie. Now we’ll see whether people will show up or not.”