The Season to Rake It In?

In the fall, it’s not only the leaves that turn to gold. A few movies do too.

In recent years, a number of Hollywood films have unexpectedly become blockbusters in the weeks between Labor Day and Thanksgiving--a period of dampened expectations at the box office because kids are back in school and movie theaters must compete with television’s fall lineup of sitcoms, dramas, reality shows and Regis.

But movies as different in tone and demographics as “The First Wives Club,” “Rush Hour,” “Double Jeopardy,” “American Beauty” and “Meet the Parents” have all become $100-million hits during the autumn, leaving even the filmmakers to scratch their heads in search of answers.

“Who knows?” replied Brett Ratner, when asked why his 1998 action-comedy “Rush Hour” worked so phenomenally well in the fall, grossing $141 million in North America alone. “The truth is, if you have a good movie, it doesn’t matter when it comes out. People are going to go to school or work and they’re going to talk about it.”

Added Jay Roach, who directed last October’s Ben Stiller-Robert De Niro comedy, “Meet the Parents,” which grossed $166.2 million in North America: “I actually think we were quite fortunate to come out in the fall the way we did. It enabled us to sell the film for all of its assets instead of singling out its broadest comedy aspects.”

Likewise, Bruce Beresford’s suspense-filled thriller “Double Jeopardy” became the surprise hit of the 1999 autumn season, grossing $168 million domestically even though it featured two mid-level stars in Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones.

Producer Leonard Goldberg recalled that Paramount Pictures studio chief Sherry Lansing chose late September to release the movie because, as a producer years before, she had had fantastic success with another woman-seeking-revenge drama, the 1987 classic thriller “Fatal Attraction.”

“If the first date worked for ‘Fatal Attraction,”’ Goldberg said, “then you somehow feel the elements have lined up properly for thrillers to be accepted on that date. Studios have to feel comfortable with dates with movies they are releasing, and past success on that date is a source of comfort. It’s not very scientific, but maybe when all is said and done, that’s not a bad thing to look at.”

The box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. calculates that in the past two years, the fall season has accounted for roughly 17% of the year’s total box office, a far cry from summer’s 35% to 40% market share, but still nothing to sneeze at.

“You can have a very successful film in the fall,” says Exhibitor Relations’ Paul Dergarabedian. “It’s a different sort of playing time. You hear talk that this summer, films were opening big and dropping off big [by their second weekend in release]. In the fall, I think you are going to see a different type of opening weekend. On average, they’re going to be smaller, but as a result, the drop-off will be slower because there is a smaller available audience.

“Summer is still the perfect time to release a blockbuster,” he added, “but the fall is a great time to release a film that requires a little more nurturing, like an ‘American Beauty.”’

A dark comedy starring Kevin Spacey as a man facing a midlife crisis in suburbia, the Oscar-winning “American Beauty” was anything but an instant blockbuster when it was released.

Unlike a summer release, DreamWorks chose to roll the movie out slowly, building a following with positive reviews and word-of-mouth. The film debuted the weekend of Sept. 15, 1999, in only 16 sites and grossed $861,531. The studio gradually increased the number of screens throughout the fall, with the box office finally crossing the $100-million mark by mid-March of the following year. The final domestic gross: $130.1 million.

DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press said that the decision to release “American Beauty” in the fall was dictated, in part, by the dark tone of the comedy and the fact that it could be premiered in September at the Toronto Film Festival, where Oscar buzz is often created.

Looking back at the mid-September release date, she said: “I don’t know what other time we would have released it. If you release a film in September, you are farther away from when traditionally other Academy [Award-contending] movies come out. The good thing is, you’re not in the clog of other academy movies at the end of the year.”

However, she noted that releasing movies in the fall can get expensive because television networks are premiering their new shows in September and studios with movies arriving in October have to pay premium rates to buy commercial time on those programs.

“Rush Hour” presented a different set of problems for New Line Cinema back in 1998.

With plenty of martial arts action and comedy, “Rush Hour” was the kind of pleasing film that could have opened easily during the summer. But when “Rush Hour” first came out, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker had not become the powerhouse team that would quickly emerge with the film’s release.

Michael De Luca, who then oversaw production at New Line, said the fall seemed to be the right time to release “Rush Hour” because “after the summer movies, we thought people were in the mood for something fresh. We thought we had a sleeper.”

“Traditionally, sleepers do best when they’re not surrounded by high-profile competition,” De Luca explained. “The fall had worked with us for [the 1995 R-rated detective thriller] ‘Seven.’ So, this movie was rated PG-13. We just rolled the dice that people would come. When you have good test screenings, it suggests a picture can have legs.”

In addition, De Luca noted, comedian Tucker had earlier appeared in two smaller movies--”Friday” (1995) and “Money Talks” (1997)--and “Friday” proved a phenomenal success on home video, so the studio knew this would create a fan base it could use to promote “Rush Hour.”

“It was kind of how ‘Billy Madison’ and ‘Happy Gilmore’ built up ‘The Wedding Singer,”’ De Luca said. “Then, by combining Jackie Chan with Chris Tucker, we were able to reach critical mass with our casting combination.”

Sometimes, movies wind up doing well in the fall even though they weren’t supposed to be fall releases. That happened to director Hugh Wilson on “The First Wives Club” back in 1996.

“I was just rushing to finish because [Paramount] wanted to bring it out over the summer,” Wilson recalled. “The strategy then was a question of ‘Do we bring it out during the heavily competitive summer or Christmas periods, or do we sneak it in between?”’

“The First Wives Club” starred Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton as three middle-aged friends who find they have one thing in common: They’ve all been dumped by their husbands. Few would have predicted that a comedy featuring three actresses over 40 would be a hit. But the movie, which opened on Sept. 22, 1996, made a tidy $18.9 million on its maiden weekend and went on to gross $105.5 million--a rock-solid hit even by today’s standards.

Wilson said the female audience was crucial to the movie’s success. “When we started testing the film with focus groups,” he said, “we saw that it did very well with women”--even with those who had only seen the trailers in theaters. “I guess having that kind of demographic power, it could almost go anywhere.”

The same women-out-for-revenge theme, albeit much darker in tone and concept, ran through the thriller “Double Jeopardy,” which opened Sept. 26, 1999, and grossed $23.2 million on its first weekend.

Producer Goldberg recalled that the movie had been completed in late spring, which left plenty of time for Paramount to get its marketing machine in gear.

But the going wasn’t smooth, even in the autumn. “We got hit four weeks in a row with pictures that were supposed to demolish us,” he recalled. “We surprised everyone by coming out of nowhere. “

Why was the film so successful? “We had the least amount of stars, but what we found out early on that one of the advantages with finishing a movie early is that you can screen it and get audience reactions and get your commercials done.

“We found out that when you got to that moment where the convict in prison says to Ashley, ‘Did you ever hear of anything called “double jeopardy?”’ and explains to her they can’t try you for the same crime twice ... audiences went nuts, particularly the women.”

Goldberg said the entire marketing campaign was built around the idea of double jeopardy--what the husband had done to the woman and now what she was going to do to him.

Would “Double Jeopardy” have been as successful had it come out at another time of year? “I don’t know,” Goldberg said. “I think the idea was strong enough so that it could have been.” But Goldberg is also realistic enough to know that “Double Jeopardy,” had it been released in the summer against “The Perfect Storm” and “The Patriot” and other big event movies, could have gotten lost.

“We couldn’t go up against them,” he said.

One of the tricks of releasing a hit movie at any time of year, if you’re a studio distribution executive, is sizing up the competition on the weekend you are thinking of rolling out your movie.

Nikki Rocco, the veteran distribution head at Universal, looked at the schedule of films last fall and thought early October would be a great time to release a comedy, in this case, “Meet the Parents.”

“Why not go out with a film we had screened and knew would have a broad appeal?” Rocco said. “There were no major comedies coming out at that time.”

When Rocco looked at the release schedule of all the studios, she saw that two weeks before “Meet the Parents” was due to open, the biggest movie in the marketplace was the teen thriller “Urban Legends” and a reissue of “The Exorcist.” One week out, it was the high school football drama “Remember the Titans,” starring Denzel Washington.

Without other big comedies competing for the same audience, “Meet the Parents” opened with $28.6 million the weekend of Oct. 8.

Director Roach said there were other release-date options, but he decided to trust Rocco, whom he refers to as Universal’s “distribution wizard” because of her uncanny ability to successfully launch so many different kinds of movies at all times of the year.

“She had a sense that a lot of films coming out in the summer were comedies that had broad humor and that people might be starved for character-driven humor that would appeal to both parents and kids,” Roach recalled. “She felt the fall was the right time. I actually remember thinking, ‘Really?’

“I remember also wondering about the [Sydney] Olympics at that time and asking, ‘Should we come out at the Olympics?”’ Roach recalled. “But [the studio] knew it was not such a bad date because the Olympics will be taped in Sydney.”

Whether it was Stiller accidentally setting a backyard on fire, or the expression on De Niro’s face as he hooks his daughter’s beau up to a lie detector, or the family cat doing its business on the toilet, there were many humorous morsels that people of every age could relish in a film that seemed suited to any time of the year.

Of course, Roach noted, had the film come out the same weekend as the blockbuster Jim Carrey comedy “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” it might have been another story.

“Where would we be?” the director asked. “Fortunately, that also was a Universal movie.”

Roach, who directed both “Austin Powers” comedies, said he’s glad he trusted Universal’s judgment.

“I think people are probably happy that someone took a shot at releasing a comedy in the fall,” he said. “Hopefully, they enjoy laughing as much in October as July.” *