The Low-Cost Sequel Gets Its Screen Test

When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. releases its “Barbershop 2: Back in Business” in 2,700 theaters and on more than 3,000 screens Friday, it will be aiming for a possible record with the widest release ever for a black-themed feature film.

The studio will also be testing a pet theory of Vice Chairman Chris McGurk: the notion that a big-league film franchise can be built on a minor-league budget.

Just 17 months ago, MGM scored a surprise hit with the original “Barbershop,” a modestly budgeted ensemble comedy about one day in the life of a Chicago haircut emporium run by a struggling young barber played by movie star and rapper Ice Cube.

Powered by controversy over its satiric barbs at African American icons Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson, the picture grabbed a cross-cultural audience and took in more than $75 million at the U.S. box office.

Under the McGurk doctrine, MGM now is supposed to do it again -- and again -- without losing its balance in the price spiral that frequently makes Hollywood sequels cost more than they’re worth.

“It’s a hallmark of our strategy right now. Of 10 or 12 films a year on our slate, maybe half of them have a shot” at generating a relatively low-cost follow-up, McGurk said in a Tuesday interview.

MGM hasn’t exactly whipped inflation yet. According to studio officials, “Barbershop 2” cost just under $30 million. That’s more than twice the original film’s price tag, though still a bargain as major studio pictures go.

In November, the Century City-based studio also expects to release “Beauty Shop,” a similarly budgeted spin-off starring and co-produced by Queen Latifah. Moreover, the company has been flirting with a possible deal to produce a “Barbershop” television series, McGurk said.

If those enterprises succeed, MGM -- the subject of past scorn for its many false starts and changes in direction -- can claim to have outmaneuvered conglomerate-owned rivals such as Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. and Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Entertainment.

MGM is rare among Hollywood’s major studios. It is a free-standing company controlled by dominant shareholder Kirk Kerkorian and heavily concentrated in the movie business without an array of supporting media enterprises.

Despite a relatively thin release schedule last quarter, the studio appears poised to report strong results, thanks in part to income from its large library and the peculiarities of film accounting rules, which require an immediate write-off of distribution costs. For studios with heavier release schedules, that requirement can mean having to report losses for movies that ultimately are profitable.

Analyst Jeffrey Logsdon with Harris Nesbitt Gerard said he expected the studio to post a profit of 23 cents a share in the fourth quarter, up from 7 cents in the year-earlier period.

“They had very minimal distribution cost from new films,” Logsdon said. The company’s fourth-quarter wide releases were the Carl Franklin-directed “Out of Time,” which took in $40.9 million at the U.S. box office, and “Good Boy!,” which had $37.6 million in U.S. ticket sales.

The last major test of McGurk’s franchise-on-the-cheap approach succeeded, if not spectacularly. Doubling down on its “Legally Blonde,” the studio gambled last July on a sequel that cost about two-and-a-half times the about $20 million spent on the original and took in somewhat less -- about $90 million -- in U.S. ticket sales.

Studio sources say the second film returned a profit of about $70 million, compared with $110 million for the original. According to Logsdon, DVD sales from “Legally Blonde 2” will be a major contributor to the expected strong quarterly results.

For the “Barbershop” knock-offs, the most delicate problem isn’t cost but how to repeat, without seeming to exploit, the original film’s artful self-critique of black culture -- a crucial task, given that McGurk has been trying to position MGM as a home for “urban” filmmakers.

Cedric the Entertainer, who mouthed the barbs at Park and King, is said to resume his monologue in the current film, which delves into the troubled barbershop’s history. Wary of pushing such attitude too far, studio executives were careful to keep the film’s release away from King’s birthday, when the advantage of a three-day weekend might have been offset by increased sensitivity to the jabs.

According to box-office consulting firm Exhibitor Relations, deciding whether “Barbershop 2,” directed by black filmmaker Kevin Rodney Sullivan, is recognized as the widest African American-themed release may depend on definitions.

Sony’s “Bad Boys II” -- which opened last year in nearly 3,200 theaters and took in $138.4 million at the U.S. box office -- featured two African American stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. But the picture had a white director, Michael Bay, and followed the lines of a conventional action-adventure buddy film.

“Barbershop 2,” by contrast, is rooted firmly in black culture -- and is reaching for the mainstream audience with major distribution and marketing push.

On Tuesday, McGurk said he was comfortable seeing his strategy tested with the film, which hasn’t yet been widely reviewed: “It’s got the heart, the comedy and the meaning of the original, and more.”

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Wide release

A selection of movies that opened in wide release featuring African American actors:

*--* Domestic box office Opening Opening Movie Distributor (millions) date theaters 1 Bad Boys II Sony $138.4 7/18/03 3,186 2 Radio* Sony 52.3 10/24/03 3,074 3 Big Momma’s House Fox 117.6 6/2/00 2,802 4 Bringing Down the Buena Vista 132.5 3/7/03 2,801 House 5 Beverly Hills Cop III Paramount 42.6 5/25/94 2,748 6 What’s the Worst MGM 32.3 6/1/01 2,675 That Can Happen? 7 Life Universal 63.9 4/16/99 2,594 8 Malibu’s Most Wanted Warner 34.3 4/18/03 2,503 9 Shaft Paramount 70.3 6/16/00 2,337 10 Blade New Line 70.1 8/21/98 2,322

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* Still in theaters

Source: Exhibitor Relations