Friday, 2 February 2001

NEWS BY NUMBERS / SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW

Lots of numbers today. Though I explained yesterday that as you read the column, I was already in Bermuda, today I'm reminding you that I'm still on the plane, writing. Because of production schedules at roughcut.com, my first day of B.I.F.F. coverage (that's the Bermuda International Film Festival) will be Monday and continue Tuesday and probably Wednesday too ... even though I'll be in Chicago by then. In any case, here's ...

The Hot Button Summer Preview

Week 1. With DreamWorks staking out their first-weekend-in-May start to the summer season, launched last year with The Mummy, Universal Studios has decided to start the summer two whole weeks earlier this summer, kicking things off with U-571. And a good kick-off it is. Strangely enough, the other studio films that are being released around U-571 and Universal's second summer release, Viva Rock Vegas, opening just one weekend later, are not really summer movies, but more spring mortar fodder. Center Stage, Love and Basketball, The Virgin Suicides, Timecode, Gossip, Where The Heart Is, Committed and The Big Kahuna are likely to gross in total about what U-571 does in its first three weekends. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Only New Line's Frequency has a real shot at an early summer audience and New Line is already finding that selling the movie is harder than making the movie.

Week 2. Gladiator kicks May off, and you can expect big dollars to come in for this men-in-skirts epic. Sadly, it isn't as good a movie as it should be, failing to really tell the story of a man fighting for his nation and its honor so much as one about two guys who will fight until one or both of them are dead. (If you remind yourself that Djimon Hounsou seemed like a pivotal character and wonder where he went halfway through the second act, you understand my complaint.) But that doesn't mean that the ride isn't a fun one. Miramax throws Scary Movie at the wall the same weekend, hoping for overflow audiences. It's a bit early for a big comedy to be doing real summer numbers. And Sony dumps I Dreamed of Africa into our laps in a confusing style. If the movie sucks, it's less confusing. But if they have any hope for momentum, they couldn't have picked a wronger date. Especially with Dinosaur just two weekends away.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Week 3. Battlefield Earth is coming, whether you like it or not. Will it be a sleeper smash or a car wreck that leaves Warner Bros. pining for Joel Schumacher? Hard to say without seeing the movie. The buzz is so all over the place you could get whiplash trying to keep up. Meanwhile, Miramax ships Hamlet off on a raft and waits for video release time.

Week 4. Now, Dinosaur. No one can really lose their job over this because Joe Roth is already gone, but if Dinosaur does only what the lower-end Disney animated films have done it will become the studio's first animated money loser since The Rescuers went down under. (And to tell you the truth, they probably made back their money on that one.) Disney, since Eisner arrived, has had two landmark films on an unhappy financial level. Both made over $100 million. Both caused the studio to reassess their spending habits. The first was Dick Tracy, which may have been the first film to make over $100 million and to lose money. The second was Armageddon, which eventually hit black, but just barely. And with over $500 million in worldwide box office, that is a scary thought, indeed. Dinosaur could be the third such scare. And the first in animation, an area of moviemaking whose costs have risen exponentially as Disney and the other studios-- and Disney itself -- have had to keep up with the Disney legacy.

According to the schedule I'm looking at, alternative teen programmers Road Trip and Loser are both scheduled to open on that same weekend. Both are terrific teen plays. But the fact that they are crowding each other (or were crowding each other; I can't believe that either studio is going head-to-head with these two) is an indication of how loaded the summer is. Push to June 2 and you face Big Momma's House. June 23, Me, Myself and Irene. Someone has to go to July 14. Maybe one of them already has.

"Summer's here, and the time is right, for dancing in the aisles ...