Who’s up, and who’s on the ropes

Hollywood’s longest-running, if not cruelest, parlor game focuses on who’s up and who’s down. And this weekend’s movie openings offer a dramatic contrast between a once-potent studio on the decline and an upstart independent hoping to become a new industry force.

The approaching fortunes of the companies -- New Line Cinema, which is premiering Will Ferrell’s “Semi-Pro,” and Summit Entertainment, the distributor of Christina Ricci’s “Penelope” -- couldn’t be more dissimilar. Although Ferrell’s basketball comedy will trounce Ricci’s ugly duckling fable over the coming weekend, those short-term box office results are largely irrelevant to the firms’ ultimate outlooks.

Even though it made the profit-gushing “Lord of the Rings” movies, New Line has been marked for downsizing, if not possible complete closure, by parent Time Warner Inc. The employment contracts on New Line leaders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are set to expire soon, and the company’s rank-and-file employees are spending almost as much time worrying about their job prospects as developing, making and releasing new movies, according to people close to the company.

“Lord of the Rings” filmmaker Peter Jackson sued New Line over the studio’s accounting, as has the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Next month’s planned release of Gavin O’Connor’s “Pride and Glory” has been delayed indefinitely, sparking a rift between the studio and O’Connor, who directed the Disney hit “Miracle.” When it comes to making new movies, talent agents say, New Line is dead in the water.

Although New Line’s expensive “The Golden Compass” won an Academy Award on Sunday for visual effects, the film did much better overseas ($253 million) than it did domestically ($70 million), and the likelihood of any more New Line movies based on Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy looks dim. Three of the studio’s most recent releases -- “Rendition,” “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “Over Her Dead Body” -- flopped badly. Can Ferrell’s basketball movie change the score?

As Chick Hearn might have said, New Line is throwing up a prayer.

Ferrell is indisputably one of Hollywood’s top comedy stars, with the box office results to prove it. His “Blades of Glory” opened to $33 million last year, and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” enjoyed a $47-million opening weekend in 2006. But both of those films were rated PG-13, and “Semi-Pro,” set in 1976 in the world of the now-defunct American Basketball Assn., is rated R for language and sexual content.

That wouldn’t be an issue if “Semi-Pro” were a sex comedy aimed directly at post-adolescent boys and young men. But the target audience for basketball movies runs much younger: Among those most interested in such stories are boys barely in their teens who obviously can’t buy an R-rated admission on their own. Audience tracking surveys show that those pre-pubescent boys are about twice as interested in “Semi-Pro” as are older males, a worrisome statistic.

Another factor working against New Line, which declined to talk about “Semi-Pro” for this column, is the release date. Despite the renaissance of R-rated comedies, February (and even March) are among the crueler months for raunch. “Old School,” which premiered in February 2003, grossed $17.5 million in its first weekend, on its way to a total of $75.2 million. In March 1999, “Analyze This” opened to $18.4 million, ultimately grossing $106.9 million.

Look for “Semi-Pro” to open better than those two movies, perhaps with as much as $22 million in its first three days, but have trouble sticking around for long. That’s because March 7 brings “10,000 B.C.,” which early audience surveys suggest could enjoy a massive opening.

“Penelope” is the first official release from the new management at Summit Entertainment, an as-yet-untested producer and distributor with access to $1 billion in financing (last year’s Summit release “P2” was a holdover from Summit’s prior operators). Summit’s first soup-to-nuts production is March 14’s mixed martial arts movie “Never Back Down.” “Penelope,” on the other hand, was an acquisition -- and a complicated one at that.

The movie about a girl (Ricci) born with a snout instead of a nose premiered at 2006’s Toronto International Film Festival. IFC Films and Weinstein Co. partnered to acquire and release the movie and set two “Penelope” release dates for the spring and summer of 2007. But the film’s producers were unhappy with IFC’s plans and looked for another distributor.

Summit Co-Chairman Rob Friedman had seen “Penelope” in Toronto, and his new studio not only took over the film but also overhauled IFC’s marketing plans, showcasing Ricci’s snout rather than trying to hide it. In spots broadcast on the cable channels Nickelodeon, Oxygen and Lifetime, Summit has been selling the movie to moms and their daughters. Summit also hopes that the film’s yearlong delay will work in its favor, as “Penelope” costar James McAvoy now has more recognition thanks to his leading role in the award-winning “Atonement.”

With an advertising commitment of about $10 million, Summit doesn’t need “Penelope” to be a box-office hit, which it likely won’t be. An opening “Penelope” weekend of about $4.5 million seems probable, or about half of what the weekend’s only other national release, Natalie Portman’s “The Other Boleyn Girl,” should do.

--

john.horn@latimes.com