‘Alamo’ May Be a Lost Battle for Disney

“The Alamo” got off to a non-blockbuster start over the weekend.

Walt Disney Co.’s $100-million feature tied for third place at the box office, with an estimated $9.2 million in ticket sales, as Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” went from fifth place to No. 1 and Sony Pictures Entertainment’s “Hellboy” landed at No. 2.

The other film that came in third, the Fox Searchlight comedy “Johnson Family Vacation,” showed in roughly half as many theaters as “The Alamo.”

“It was a disappointment to open at this number,” said Chuck Viane, president of Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, “because you have so many people who worked so diligently on this movie.”

Analyst Tom Wolzien of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. called the opening “inauspicious.” But he cautioned against drawing conclusions about the effect the film’s showing might have on Disney or its chief executive, Michael Eisner, who was stripped of the chairmanship last month after shareholders delivered a stinging rebuke of his leadership and the company’s financial and stock performance.

“I tell people that they should never buy these stocks based on how well these movies do,” Wolzien said, adding, “You get your ups and downs in the movie business -- and this is not one of the ups.”

Last year the Disney studio enjoyed a record year. This year has been rocky so far, with “Hidalgo” and “The Ladykillers” not meeting expectations, analysts said, and the animated feature “Home on the Range” having such a lackluster start that there was speculation the company might have to take a write-down on it.

And unlike Wolzien, some analysts do figure there’s a connection between box-office and companywide performance. Along with “Home on the Range” -- which finished sixth over the weekend -- they view “The Alamo” as an important swing factor in the studio’s earnings. Some have said they might revise their financial estimates for the whole company based on how “The Alamo” fares.

“Some investors will closely scrutinize the performance of “The Alamo,” Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Schwab SoundView, said in a research note.

To recoup its costs, Disney needs “The Alamo” to make a strong showing next weekend, when it faces competition from two other movies heavily oriented toward male viewers: Disney unit Miramax Film Corp.’s “Kill Bill Volume 2” and “The Punisher” by Lions Gate/Artisan.

Despite the muted premiere for “The Alamo,” Disney’s Viane said: “We look forward to seeing whether it has legs.” In Marina del Rey on Saturday, people who saw the film were mixed on whether it did. At two hours and 16 minutes, the tale of the 1836 battle of the Alamo at what is now San Antonio is awfully long, many moviegoers complained.

But many praised Billy Bob Thornton’s portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett as a man embarrassed by the embellishment of his exploits.

“I think a lot of us grew up with these very unrealistic images of past heroes as perfect people,” a luster “The Alamo” doesn’t try to exhibit, said Kenneth Cox, a computer technician from Venice. “Wasn’t that a Disney movie with that song ‘Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier’? “

The other Disney underachiever, the traditionally animated “Home on the Range,” grossed an estimated $8.2 million in its second weekend.

Viane said the movie’s daily grosses last week increased Monday through Friday, though Saturday business dipped and Sunday wasn’t expected to be great.

The Easter weekend isn’t traditionally a strong one at the box office, but many kids are on spring break this week, boosting prospects somewhat for “Home on the Range.” With $27.5 million to date, the production, which cost more than $100 million, has a long way to go to come close to making back its investment.

Another Disney question mark, the Coen brothers’ “The Ladykillers,” will “easily surpass ‘Intolerable Cruelty,’ ” Viane predicted.

“Ladykillers” grossed an estimated $4.6 million over the weekend, bringing its total to $30.4 million. “Cruelty,” which Joel and Ethan Coen made at Universal, topped out at $35.3 million.

Disney took the unusual step of pulling “The Alamo” from its planned Christmas Day slot, saying the film, which had received mixed reviews from test audiences, wasn’t ready.

Director John Lee Hancock was given months to retool the picture, even though Disney had begun to promote the Dec. 25 opening with billboards and a DVD trailer attached to the front cover of the trade paper Daily Variety at a cost of about $130,000, sources said.

Studio executives, however, have taken exception to the suggestion that “Alamo” was a troubled movie that needed fixing.

The final version puts added emphasis on the showdown at the Alamo, where fewer than 200 Texas rebels were crushed by the 5,000-man Mexican army, while downplaying the bloody retribution battle at San Jacinto weeks later.

Early in the project, Disney’s concerns over the budget and violence level resulted in director Ron Howard and box office star Russell Crowe bowing out. Howard stayed on as a producer, along with his partner, Brian Grazer, and Mark Johnson.

If “The Alamo” and “Home on the Range” don’t meet expectations, losses from those movies could be offset by strong DVD and home video revenue from last year’s hits “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Finding Nemo.”

This summer, Disney will release producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s action-adventure film “King Arthur,” which cost about $120 million, and “National Treasure,” a $100-million picture starring Nicolas Cage as a modern-day treasure hunter.

The 2004 lineup also includes a thriller from “The Sixth Sense” director M. Night Shyamalan and a Bill Murray comedy at Christmas, as well as Pixar Animation Studios’ next computer-animated comedy, “The Incredibles.”

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Times staff writer R. Kinsey Lowe contributed to this report.