There Will Be No Escaping ‘Godzilla’

You want big?

“Godzilla,” TriStar Pictures’ monster-run-amok movie, will debut next week on more theater screens than any film in Hollywood history.

That was the startling word Wednesday coming from euphoric officials at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Culver City, who announced that the movie would open on 7,363 screens--roughly a quarter of all screens in North America.

The figure eclipses the previous record-holder, “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” which opened on 6,190 screens on Memorial Day weekend 1997.

“This has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Blake, president of Sony Pictures Releasing. “We always felt 6,000 screens would have been great. I would have never dreamed we would have exceeded 7,000.”

Sony had angered theater owners by demanding that they fork over 80% of the first week’s box-office proceeds--instead of the normal 50% arrangement. “Eighty percent was never an across-the-board [demand],” Blake said. “We kind of used it to send a message to theaters that this is going to be a big deal. They sent back the message to us that there’s going to be a limit.” Blake said the two sides agreed to meet somewhere in the middle.

“No one’s paying less than 70% for the first two weeks,” he said. “Most are paying that level for the first three or four weeks of the movie, which is a rich deal. Clearly the demand is there.”

Sonny Gourley, the head film buyer at AMC Theaters in Los Angeles, said the dispute was resolved as far as his chain is concerned. “We did not pay any 80%,” he said.

As for the film itself, Gourley said: “I think it’s going to be huge. It’s going to have ‘Lost World’-type [box-office] numbers.”

With a mixture of hoopla and paranoia, Sony has been making final preparations all week for the release of “Godzilla.”

Hoopla: The studio has invited 12,000 guests--from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to sci-fi fans--to Monday night’s premiere at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. They will watch the movie on a screen that extends from one wall of the arena to the other. (Yes, size does matter.)

Paranoia: Sony is so fearful that someone might secretly shoot a photo or video footage of the rampaging creature that those attending advance press screenings in New York and Hollywood this weekend will have to walk through metal detectors and have their bags searched.

“What I don’t want is if someone were to take a picture off the screen,” said a studio spokesman.

Like Eisenhower preparing the Allies for the D-Day landing, Sony executives are gearing up for an all-out assault on the world’s popular culture keyed to next Wednesday’s official launch of “Godzilla.”

The film will actually debut at 7 p.m. Tuesday--four days before the Memorial Day holiday weekend begins--with special sneak showings at many theaters.

Then on Wednesday, retailers will finally have been given the green light to begin stocking shelves with Godzilla toys, candy bars, CDs--and even Godzilla Vanilla ice cream from Dreyer’s that features chocolate chunks shaped like the monster. In all, some 300 licensees will churn out 3,000 products.

“We sort of look at this not simply as the launching of a movie, but the launching of a franchise called ‘Godzilla,’ ” said Bob Levin, president of worldwide marketing for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

As a publicity gimmick, the studio also sent out giant, 3 1/2-foot-long pencils emblazoned with “Size Does Matter” to the news media.

Meanwhile, almost everyone has noticed the “Godzilla” billboards, which seem to have taken outdoor advertising to a new level--tailoring billboards to specific neighborhoods.

In Chicago, for example, there is a billboard that says Godzilla’s foot is as big as Wrigley Field. In St. Louis, there’s one that says he’s as tall as the St. Louis Arch.

To date, the Godzilla TV and theatrical trailers have revealed only portions of the scaly lizard, but that will change once the movie comes out, Levin said.

Expectations are also high on the Sony lot.

“What I detect is a lot of bullishness,” said David Foster, the co-producer of “The Mask of Zorro,” which TriStar is to release later this summer. “You have a premiere in Madison Square Garden. That’s about as bullish as you can get.”

Foster added with a laugh: “It damn well better open big, because our trailer is attached to every negative of ‘Godzilla.’ ”