Hollywood on pace for another record year

Monday, May 29, 2000 | 9:55 a.m.

Heading into its busiest season, the industry has a good head start on breaking its box office revenue record for a third straight year, without the benefit of a mega-blockbuster "Star Wars" flick. Revenues are up 9 percent from the same time last year.

The question is whether the lower-profile lineup of movies this summer can collectively match last year's torrid pace. A record 12 movies released between May 1999 and early September hit $100 million, while the overall box office from Memorial Day to Labor Day last year was an all-time high of nearly $3 billion. Two surprise hits alone, "The Blair Witch Project" and "The Sixth Sense," accounted for 10 percent of the summer total.

Hollywood was in a box office funk until about this time last year, when "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" set off a flurry of film-going that resulted in a record $7.5 billion in movie grosses for 1999. "Phantom Menace" took in $431 million domestically.

This year, the industry enters its busy summer season a step ahead of 1999. Through May 21, U.S. audiences had spent $2.44 billion on movie tickets, up from $2.25 billion in the same period a year ago.

"Last year, the months of May, June, July and August all were record months," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which tracks movie ticket sales. "That's tough to beat, but the year looks good so far."

While revenues are up, movie attendance remains far below Hollywood's heyday of the 1930s and 1940s. Still, movie attendance climbed through much of the 1990s, and audiences the last two years have been the largest since the late 1950s.

Unlike last year, when blockbusters such as "The Matrix" and "The Mummy" dominated the pre-summer period, the wealth has been spread among a slate of more modestly successful films. Two pictures, "Gladiator" and "Erin Brockovich," have hit $100 million this year, while many others have delivered respectable returns, including "Scream 3," "The Whole Nine Yards," "Next Friday," "Snow Day," "Romeo Must Die," "Rules of Engagement" and "U-571."

DreamWorks' "Gladiator" and Disney's "Dinosaur" kicked May into high gear, with Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible 2" close on their heels. Cruise's caper opened Wednesday, taking in $80 million in its first five days, distributor Paramount estimated Sunday.

"If you think of 'Gladiator,' 'Dinosaur' and 'Mission: Impossible,' that's a fairly strong month of May," said Walter Parkes, co-head of DreamWorks Pictures, the studio's movie division. "Let's just hope it carries over into summer."

While nothing has quite the hype "Phantom Menace" did in 1999, this summer has solid prospects with Nicolas Cage in "Gone in 60 Seconds"; Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer in "What Lies Beneath"; Mel Gibson in the flesh for "The Patriot" and by voice in the animated "Chicken Run"; Samuel L. Jackson in "Shaft"; Jim Carrey in "Me, Myself & Irene"; George Clooney in "The Perfect Storm"; Eddie Murphy in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps"; and those comic-book mutants in "X-men."

Other high-profile movies include "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," featuring Robert De Niro; Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys"; Keanu Reeves in the football comedy "The Replacements"; and "Pokemon The Movie 2000."

Some sleeper hits likely will crop up. Kevin Bacon's invisible-scientist turn in "Hollow Man" includes visceral special effects that could help the movie catch fire.

Last year, no one saw "The Sixth Sense" coming, with Bruce Willis working with a boy who saw dead people. This summer, Willis is paired with another boy in "Disney's The Kid," a comedy that could break out in a summer that's light on funny family films.

Theater owners are counting on summer's diverse lineup to pack in the crowds. A building boom by cinema developers has been credited for drawing audiences back to movies, but it also has left theater chains burdened with debt.

"I think we will have a third straight record year in terms of total grosses," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. "We need to, frankly, because we have more screens than we've ever had before."