TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/073090/0730421.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7KB | 154 lines

                                                                                CINEMA, Page 56

If It Worked Before, Do It Again


The summer's movies go for a knockout but settle for a TKO

By RICHARD CORLISS -- With reporting by Nancy Newman/New York


    Every year when Americans celebrate Memorial Day, Hollywood
launches its summer star wars. The big studios trot out their
big names -- tough guys with flinty stares and handsome hair
-- to swagger through  apocalyptic fantasies. See cars blow up!
See Mars blow up! See budgets and salaries go up! See the
movies do anything but grow up, as long as moviegoers pay for
the ride. Summer's here, and the time is right for filling up
the seats.

    Last year for the first time the summer box-office revenue
topped $2 billion. The surge was led by Batman, which cost $50
million to produce but brought in $251 million at the domestic
wickets to rank as the fourth all-time movie hit. Not far
behind -- at $197 million, ninth on the all-time list -- was
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a gilt-edged sequel. These
successes seemed to validate the rules that Hollywood likes to
play by: bet big to win big; and if it worked before, do it
again.

    So this year the moguls spent $55 million to send Tom Cruise
around a racetrack in Days of Thunder, $65 million to launch
Arnold Schwarzenegger into outer space for Total Recall, $70
million to help Bruce Willis save a besieged airport in Die
Hard 2. The industry would pay any price, detonate any
explosion, inflate any body count to meet its megahit
expectations.

    So far, Gold Rush II hasn't quite happened. Nobody will go
broke; some actors, directors and producers are raking in fees
that would make Jose Canseco envious. But the ticket lines are
shorter. Variety's Art Murphy, grand statmaster of movie
grosses, projects this summer's take as $1.85 billion, down 9%
from last year's. Total Recall has already earned more than
$105 million, and Dick Tracy and Die Hard  2 could earn that and
more before Labor Day. But other pictures have already started
to run out of steam, especially pricey sequels like Another 48
Hrs., RoboCop 2, Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Back to the
Future, Part III.

    Audiences are queuing up each weekend for the new
blockbuster, then spurning it for next week's thrill machine.
Why? Because, with minor variations, each film is the same
film; each is a sequel to the others. They offer the same kinds
of villains (terrorists and corporate thugs), the same
spectacular stuntmanship, the same jolts within the narrowest
band of Hollywood entertainment. They are fables about little
boys with big toys. Feel-good is not the feeling; these are
workout pictures that, taken in large doses, wear the moviegoer
out. Viewers don't get massaged, they get rolfed. And because
the films finally blur together, none may have the "legs," the
staying power, of last summer's hits.

    Or even of this spring's. March is normally a sluggish month
at the box office, but this year three films -- Pretty Woman,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Hunt for Red October --
each pulled in summer-worthy figures of well over $100 million.
Disney's Pretty Woman, an airhead Cinderella comedy that speaks
to every man's dream of buying a beautiful woman and every
woman's fantasy of a Rodeo Drive shopping spree, is near $160
million and still going strong. It stands a good chance of
becoming the first film since Blazing Saddles in 1974 to win the
year's box-office race without having been released in the
summer or Christmas seasons. "It's out of date," says Jeffrey
Katzenberg, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, "this idea
that there are 12 golden weeks of summer and two golden weeks
of winter. We are now a 52-weeks-a-year business."

    This year business executives must look to midsummer
releases for a word-of-mouth smash. If nearly all the June
movies could be called Total Recall (so reminiscent are they
of previous action hits), the films of July and August could
be labeled Presumed Interesting. Moviegoers are looking for
something different, and they may have already found it in the
postmortem romantic thriller Ghost or the eye-spider horror
comedy Arachnophobia. Presumed Innocent hopes to corner the
serious market. Even David Lynch is invading summertime with
his bizarro-world Wild at Heart. Each hopes to duplicate the
surprise-hit status of last summer's When Harry Met Sally, Dead
Poets Society, Parenthood and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

    But does it matter whether they ring up gigantic grosses at
the U.S. box office? Not really, because the biggest business
is elsewhere. "The film theater is very visible," says
Variety's Murphy. "It is the launch pad, and the big hit there
is the big hit in all markets -- in videocassettes, in pay,
cable, network and syndicated TV, and in all those markets
around the world." Murphy notes that 10 years ago, theater
grosses represented 80% of worldwide revenues; today they are
only 30%. "And even taking out inflation, 30% of the 1990 pie
is bigger than 80% of the 1980 pie." So there is less riding on
the weekly theatrical tally. A film's main job is to establish
itself as something the public wants to consume in the future,
where the real money is. This long shelf life can persuade a
studio to pay $3 million for a screenplay and $20 million to
a star like Sylvester Stallone. "These artists get so much,"
says Murphy, "because their agents know there is home video in
Borneo and it's coming to Singapore."

    Moviegoers, of course, don't pay for the cost of a movie.
They are as likely to spurn a megamovie as they are to embrace
a pinchpenny picture like Ninja Turtles. But for now, moguls
are willing to believe that the VCR revolution has made the
movie industry slump-proof; 1990 may not match last summer, but
it should still be the second biggest-grossing summer ever. And
viewers may dare to hope that amid the bigger bangs for bigger
bucks, Hollywood doesn't forget how to make good movies.


____________________________________________________________ A
TALE OF TWO SUMMERS

[Box-office gross, in millions.]

                                  1989, Total   As of 7/16/89

    Batman                           $251.1           $168
          Indiana Jones and the       Last Crusade
       $197.0           $166     Lethal Weapon 2
    $147.0            $49     Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
 $130.1            $75     Ghostbusters II
$111.9            $93

                                   1990, Est.   As of 7/15/90

    Total Recall                       $130           $105
        Die Hard 2                         $130            $61
   Dick Tracy                         $125            $90
Another 48 Hrs.                    $85            $71     Days
of Thunder                    $80            $54