Will ‘Blue Crush’ Miss the Box-Office Wave?

“Blue Crush” was an under-$30-million labor of love for producer Brian Grazer, an avid surfer who oversaw its filming on the big waves of Oahu’s North Shore. So why is he totally bummed that his movie is opening today?

After much lobbying by Universal Pictures, Grazer reluctantly agreed to move his film’s release from July 12 to today. But he’s still fuming over what he views as a missed opportunity to launch his lighthearted girl-empowerment movie during the beach-party mood of midsummer rather than when back-to-school blahs are setting in.

“I always preferred that the movie opened in July,” said Grazer, for whom the movie was a departure from the expensive star-driven hits such as “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “A Beautiful Mind” that have made him one of Hollywood’s hottest producers.

Universal Pictures Vice Chairman Marc Shmuger said he too would have liked the film to open in July, which is historically a much more lucrative moviegoing month than August. But he decided the movie would face too much competition on the July 12 weekend and felt that the studio needed more time to launch a grass-roots marketing blitz and convince a critical demographic--the under-21 crowd--that the film was “cool.”

“This movie was not on the radar,” Shmuger said. “We had to make it relevant to the pop culture.”

Though disputes between filmmakers and studios are commonplace in Hollywood, the “Blue Crush” ordeal illustrates how high the stakes are in the chess game that studios play when picking release dates.

Because quality alone is not enough to make a hit these days, studios pour tens of millions into marketing campaigns and stake out key weekends to open their biggest films, sometimes two years in advance. Sony Pictures Entertainment already has claimed the May 7 weekend in 2004 for its sequel to “Spider-Man.”

The competition is particularly fierce during the highest-grossing seasons of the year--the summer and winter holidays--when studios regularly engage in last-minute jockeying of releases to stay out of one another’s way.

Sony Pictures and Revolution Studios, for example, moved the high-octane spy-action thriller “XXX” from its planned Aug. 2 release date to Aug. 9 to avoid banging up against Walt Disney Co.’s supernatural thriller “Signs,” starring Mel Gibson.

“The release date is certainly one of the most important factors in opening a movie,” Warner Bros. distribution chief Dan Fellman said. “We’re in a very risky business, and you want to open a film in a time frame when you can reach the widest possible audience with the least amount of competition.”

Something certainly not lost on Grazer is that 25% of the nation’s youngsters already are back in school, and by next weekend 40% will be. By Labor Day weekend, it’s 60%. And, according to Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co., business has been down for the last four weekends.

Shmuger insists there’s still plenty of audience out there.

“It’s less perfect to push it back to August, but it’s still within summer playtime,” Shmuger said. “We have to choose among imperfect possibilities all the time. You try to make the best choice possible.”

In the case of “Blue Crush,” the discussions about a release date were the subject of a series of meetings earlier this year and reflected in a two-page memo to Grazer in which Shmuger handicapped the competition.

Shmuger feared that a small, unknown film without stars, extraordinary visual effects or a slam-dunk high concept risked getting wiped out by a wave of high-profile movies such as “Men in Black II” and “Road to Perdition,” which came into the market with ready-made audience awareness.

Inspired by Susan Orlean’s Outside magazine article “Surf Girls of Maui” and directed and co-written by John Stockwell, the film features an ensemble cast of relative newcomers.

Kate Bosworth, Michele Rodriguez and Hawaii native Sanoe Lake portray surfer roommates trying to make it in the adrenaline-charged, male-dominated and dangerous sport of competitive surfing.

Universal executives hope that “Blue Crush” will become a sleeper hit much like “Bring It On,” the studio’s low-cost cheerleader film that debuted in late August 2000 to a strong reception, and last summer’s car-racing movie “The Fast and the Furious.”

The studio launched an aggressive promotional campaign to raise awareness among young moviegoers, deploying local “street teams” across the country to hand out “Blue Crush” beach towels, beach bags, posters and other movie paraphernalia at more than 1,000 different events--from a Britney Spears concert in Detroit to a teen fashion show at Minneapolis’ Mall of America.

Still, the latest tracking study, out Thursday, indicated tepid interest among moviegoers outside the film’s core audience of 12-to-21-year-old females. Though Grazer has praised Universal’s marketing efforts, the film’s sluggish tracking two weeks ago had him so concerned that he insisted Universal set aside an additional $1 million for advertising.

The supplementary ad spend was triggered this week with new amped-up TV spots running on popular shows such as “Fear Factor.”

The aim, Shmuger said, is to convey a “more energetic, sexier message to all audiences--not just girls--that this is the last great date movie of the summer.”

The dispute over the “Blue Crush” release date pits the studio against its biggest and most powerful producer. Universal and Imagine Films Entertainment Inc., the independent production outfit that Grazer co-founded with director Ron Howard, have a long history of success together with such hits as”Liar Liar,” “Apollo 13” and the “Nutty Professor” comedies.

Shmuger downplayed the brouhaha, insisting that the studio’s relationship with Grazer was as strong as ever. “This was a consensus decision,” Shmuger said. “In the end, both Imagine and Universal signed off on this date.”

But sources recall the difficulties getting there.

“It was quite a negotiation to get Brian to say yes,” noted one.

After endless discussions about switching release dates, Shmuger sized up the competition weekend by weekend in July and August and laid out the options with various pros and cons to Grazer in an April 25 memo.

Acknowledging that July 12 is “historically a great summer weekend,” Shmuger feared that competition from the holdover hit “Men in Black II” and newcomers “Road to Perdition,” “Reign of Fire” and “Crocodile Hunter” (the latter two wound up tanking), could easily squeeze out “Blue Crush.”

Shmuger suggested that its best shot would be Aug. 16, when the only other new release was Warner Bros.’ long-delayed Eddie Murphy comedy “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” while admitting the weekend was “not as consistently strong as the [other] choices.”

He also acknowledged that “we are beginning to get late in summer for a fun-in-the-sun surf movie,” but determined that “we have a strong shot at opening number one--which may make it worth it.”

That’s the kind of guarantee any producer would want. But then there are no such guarantees in the movie business. Studios don’t decide the box office; paying customers do. Although industry sources estimate “Blue Crush” will debut with $15 million to $18 million this weekend, the film faces tough competition from “XXX” and “Signs.”

In the last line of his memo to Grazer, Shmuger concedes: “As you know, it’s hard to ever guess this stuff right.”

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Late Takeoff

Producer Brian Grazer was hoping his surf movie, ‘Blue Crush,’ would open at the height of the summer season on July 12, but distributor Universal Pictures moved the release date to today because the competitive waters looked too treacherous for a small film at the earlier date.

Wide-release films ‘Blue Crush’ would have faced July 12 and their opening weekend box-office receipts, in millions:

DreamWorks/Fox’s ‘Road to Perdition’ -- $22.0

Disney/SpyGlass’ ‘Reign of Fire’ -- 15.6

Dimension Films’ ‘Halloween: Resurrection’ -- 12.3

MGM’s ‘The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course’ -- 9.5

What’s also opening this weekend:

‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash,’ a Warner Bros. space comedy with Eddie Murphy.

But ‘Blue Crush’ faces tough competition from a couple of holdover hits:

Sony Pictures/Revolution Studios’ ‘XXX,’ which debuted last weekend at $44.5 million.

Disney’s ‘Signs,’ which last weekend took in $29.5 million after two weeks in release.

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Source: Exhibitor Relations