Hollywood Gets Hot

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THE FIVE LIES OF A HOLLYWOOD SUMMER:

1. The summer produces more hits than the winter. Wrong. Summer (on the movie calendar, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, give or take a week) can bring the major movie studios 40% of their business, but during the past three years, more films released in the winter (from mid-November through March) have grossed in excess of $100 million domestically. The summer just produces more predictable hits, mostly sequels. "Hollywood is front loading the summer with blockbuster sequel products," notes Martin Grove, film analyst for the Hollywood Reporter, "which virtually guarantees that the early summer business will be strong." Lethal Weapon 3 leads the assault this weekend, , followed quickly by Alien 3 (May 22), the Red October sequel, Patriot Games (June 5) and Batman Returns (June 19), the last easily the season's most anticipated and expensive movie.

A sequel usually costs more and earns less than the original film, though Lethal Weapon 2 and last summer's top finisher, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, bucked that trend spectacularly. Batman Returns, like T2 before its release, is now the subject of a whisper-down-the-lane campaign on its sprawling budget ("It cost $70 million." "I heard 80. Who'll go for 90?"). Says Variety reporter Charles Fleming: "The only way you make money on a picture like this is if everybody in America goes three times." But all will be forgotten if director Tim Burton, who has turned dicey projects into hit movies, can do it again. "Studios are paying more attention to the bottom line," says Anne Thompson, industry maven for the L.A. Weekly, "but they still spend a lot on these big locomotive items, the sequels."

2. Summer films are for kids, winter films for adults. Not lately. This past winter played like the Nickelodeon Channel on the big screen. The four $100 million-plus movies were based on fairy tales (Beauty and the Beast, Hook) or kooky TV turns (The Addams Family, Wayne's World). Rivals are looking at Paramount's recent success with youth-oriented TV rip-offs (Addams and Wayne's, plus the Star Trek and Naked Gun series) and thinking seriously about green lighting retreads of reruns: Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, even The Flintstones with John Goodman as Fred. This summer's only TV spin-off may gross less yet turn out to be more memorable than any of these: David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Aug. 28).

If winter is now for kids who like to watch TV in a movie theater, summer is not necessarily for grownups. Social issues, which rarely have an exalted place in Hollywood, shrivel in the summer. Last summer's "serious" hit, Boyz N the Hood, made a lot of money on a weenie budget but, judging from recent events, didn't have much impact on the residents of South Central Los Angeles, where the film was set and shot. Says Disney's movie boss Jeffrey Katzenberg: "This is a time of trouble and concern, yet I am also optimistic. Hollywood can make movies that can speak to the issues we must now confront. We can also offer two hours of fun and escape from those very pressures that must now take priority in our lives."