Return of the sequels

By Robert W. Welkos

July 6, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

By the end of last summer, “sequel” was a dirty word in Hollywood. “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,” anyone?

That was then. This summer, boosted by “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Shrek 2” and now “Spider-Man 2,” sequels are flying high again.

Unlike the huge crop in 2003 that inundated summer moviegoers -- 15, with many underperformers and outright duds among them -- this season’s offerings include only eight. The smaller field has produced three major hits so far. The latest entry, “Spider-Man 2,” has raked in an estimated $180.1 million since it opened Wednesday.

How many records did it set? For those who are keeping score, it set records for the biggest July 4 weekend ($88.3 million Friday through Sunday, $115.8 million Friday through Monday), the best July opening and the highest five-day opening total. What it did not do was surpass the original “Spider-Man’s” Friday-through-Sunday opening high mark of $114.8 million.

If there is a lesson in the reversal of fortunes, it’s that “what you are seeing this summer is attention to detail that you didn’t see last summer -- attention to story, attention to character,” surmised Amy Pascal, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, which produced “Spider-Man 2.”

“Peter Parker is a beloved character. We honored that character and never strayed from him,” she said. The same can be said of successful series made by other studios, such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter,” Pascal pointed out.

“I think many of us have learned that when you have a continuing story or character that people are invested in and people care about, they want to see what happens to that character.”

Sony doesn’t plan on messing with the formula. It already has given the green light to put “Spider-Man 3” in director Sam Raimi’s hands again.

“What we will do next time is tell the story of Peter Parker’s life in the next phase of it,” Pascal said. She does not yet have a script in hand, but “we have Sam Raimi, so we are safe.” The film is scheduled to be released in May 2007.

The strong performance and generally good reviews of the Big Three -- “Spider-Man,” along with “Harry Potter” ($225.3 million) and “Shrek 2” ($410.2 million) -- set a high bar for the other summer sequels waiting in the wings.

Those include Matt Damon in the espionage sequel “The Bourne Supremacy,” which opens July 23, and teen-girl fantasy “The Princess Diaries 2,” on Aug. 11.

Also coming up are “Alien vs. Predator,” which comes out Aug. 13 and has generated enormous interest among fans of the video game that incorporates two of 20th Century Fox’s most popular space monsters; the long-delayed and extensively reshot and recut “Exorcist: The Beginning,” on Aug. 20; and, “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid,” opening Aug. 27.

Only last summer, Pascal, like other studio executives, saw some of the biggest sequels stumble in theaters. In Sony’s case, it was “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.” Even though the comedy-action film starring high-kicking “angels” Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu grossed $100.8 million domestically, the film arrived with a huge wave of marketing and promotion behind it but never lived up to the potential the studio envisioned.

The summer had started well enough with “The Matrix Reloaded” and “X2: X-Men United,” both of which opened in May. But by June, sequel fatigue began to set in, with disappointments far beyond “Charlie’s Angels” coming from “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life,” “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.”

“The summer of 2003 almost killed the future of sequels,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. “This summer, it’s all about rebuilding the audience’s trust. Two or three great sequels can erase any damage done by 15 sequels last summer.”

David Thomson, author of “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,” said there has always been a fallacy in the film business that “if you have a success you just reassemble their elements and repeat them.”

“I thought last year, what you really had were a mass of very bad sequels -- very dead,” he said. “And the audience, therefore, had the feeling they had been exploited and taken advantage of.”

“The general rule still holds that sequels drop off in quality,” Thomson continued. “ ‘The Godfather Part II’ is an exception -- and maybe ‘Spider-Man 2’ is too.”

Tom Pollock, a veteran producer who once ran Universal Pictures, said sequels only work “when effort is taken by the people who make them to try to be better than the first” -- not just “capitalizing on the marketability of the first.”

“That’s why this summer’s sequels like ‘Shrek 2’ outperformed the first one,” Pollock said. “It’s better than the first one.”

Studios like to make sequels, according to Pollock, because they are a “pre-sold entity” -- easy to market because of their familiarity.

But audiences can sense a film made in pursuit of a fast buck, Pollock added. “A lot of the audience can smell the cynicism [and realize] the movie was made only for the money.”

For studios, part of the calculation is whether to switch directors. Sony has chosen to keep Sam Raimi behind the camera for its “Spider-Man” sequels. Warner Bros., after Chris Columbus directed its first two highly successful “Harry Potter” films, turned to Alfonso Cuaron for “Prisoner of Azkaban.” Cuaron’s film has not yet reached the box-office heights of the first two films -- and may never -- but he received the best reviews for bringing more texture and style to the third incarnation. Yet another director with a very different style, Mike Newell, is at work on “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” set for release next fall.

And at Universal, when director Doug Liman, who had established “The Bourne Identity” as a possible franchise, departed to do other projects, the studio chose Paul Greengrass for the sequel.

“What we wanted to be was true to the original,” said Scott Stuber, vice chairman of worldwide production at Universal Pictures. Liman, he said, succeeded in making a spy thriller with an independent sensibility, “a different look and a different vibe.” Stuber said the studio loved Greengrass’ gritty film account of a tragic event in Northern Ireland, “Bloody Sunday,” and after sitting down one afternoon with the director in New York to discuss “The Bourne Supremacy,” felt that Greengrass could keep the sequel fresh.

More big sequels are on the way next summer. “XXX: State of the Union,” this time with Ice Cube in the lead, comes out in mid-May. “Batman Begins,” the next installment from Warner Bros. in the popular comic-book series, is set to open June 17. And Paramount Pictures has staked out next year’s Fourth of July holiday for Tom Cruise and “Mission: Impossible 3,” with a new director at the helm, Joe Carnahan. The previous “Mission: Impossible” films were directed by Brian De Palma and John Woo.

But watch what you call them. Even when such films perform well, studios like to refer to them as new chapters, or re-imaginings, or continuations -- anything but sequels.

“In Hollywood,’ said Matt Tolmach, co-president of production at Columbia Pictures, “it’s become a bad term.”

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A summer of living dangerously

Summer of 2003 started with a bang with “X2: X-Men United,” but as the season wore on, other sequels fell short of expectations. Moderately high grosses for some were outweighed by steep production costs, and then there was the “Lara Croft” tomb bomb. All figures are in millions, for domestic business.

In 2004, studios seem to have opted for quality over quantity. The first three major sequels of summer are performing well commercially and receiving mostly favorable reviews.

Some sequels worked ...

‘The Matrix Reloaded’ $281.6

[Original: The Matrix (1999) $171.5]

‘X2: X-Men United’ $214.9

[Original: X-Men (2000) $157.3]

‘Spy Kids 3D: Game Over’* $111.8

[Original: Spy Kids (2001)$112.7]

... others got by ...

‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ $127.2

[Original: The Fast and the Furious (2002) $144.5]

... and some flamed out.

‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’ $100.8