Glut of Film Hits Has Exhibitors Reeling

In this, the hottest summer in movie history, America’s theater owners and operators are discovering that there can be too much of a good thing.

With a block of solid hits dominating almost half of the country’s 24,000 theater screens, and setting a pace that will shatter all Hollywood box office records, exhibitors are giving themselves headaches trying to decide which films to leave on their screens and which to take off.

The decision is not as arbitrary as it seems. Exhibitors who pull films from theaters before their contractual commitments face penalties and studio pressure.

“It’s a problem that occurs when pictures continue to have strong legs,” said John Krier, president of Los Angeles-based Exhibitor Relations. “That means that they might have been booked for a certain period of time, but because of the volume of business, the run has to be extended.”

“This is happening all over the country,” said Salt Lake City buyer and booker David Sharp. “These blockbusters are smacking into each other left and right. One major studio wants you to hold, another wants you to open. It’s very difficult to reach a compromise. . . . Somebody wins and somebody loses in every market. Whoever pushes the hardest wins.”

When Disney’s “Peter Pan” alights on 1,450 screens Friday, it will join two surprise Disney/Touchstone pictures already in release that continue to baffle industry experts. The family film “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” now in its third week, trailed only “Lethal Weapon 2” and “Batman” in last weekend’s box-office race, grossing $9.4 million. And after seven weeks in release, “Dead Poets Society” is still very much alive. It has combined with “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” to earn Disney more than $115 million.

“It’s difficult when a studio starts commanding too many national tracks,” said Mike Ogrodowski, senior booker for Marcus Theaters in Milwaukee. “Paramount, Warners and Disney all have two tracks . . . and now ‘Peter Pan’ is opening. That’s three tracks for Disney. In a lot of towns you have to take off a ‘Dead Poets’ to play a ‘Peter Pan.’ Or delay a ‘Peter Pan’ to keep on ‘Dead Poets.’ ”

“The question becomes: Can we maintain our screens?” said Phil Barlow, general sales manager of Buena Vista, Disney’s distribution arm. “If you look, we’re edging up. ‘Dead Poets’ is gradually increasing--it was never our goal to be on 1,100 screens simultaneously with ‘Dead Poets.’ The one thing most exhibitors know is that you just don’t mess around with success on the gamble that another film will do better.”

“Peter Pan,” backed by Disney’s solid box-office projections based upon the last re-release of the film, has already delayed James Bond from stepping onto one screen in the small market of Glenwood Springs, Colo. Friday’s scheduled release of MGM/UA’s “Licence to Kill” has been pulled because “all the pictures on the screen were too strong to take off,” theater booker David Sharp said.

“ ‘Batman’ is playing on one screen and ‘Lethal Weapon’ on the second. The third screen has ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Karate Kid,’ which were stacked together to get ‘Lethal Weapon’ on last week. ‘Peter Pan’ opens this Friday, and it effectively leaves Bond out in the lurch.”

Insiders predict that the big showdown will occur in two weeks, when Disney opens “Turner and Hooch,” starring comedy superstar Tom Hanks and a drooling, 180-pound dog. Exhibitors say the film’s trailer is playing exceptionally well in theaters and the one-stop advertising board in lobbies is drawing lots of attention.

Exhibitors from larger, overscreened markets with multiplex theaters say the Disney squeeze should not cause severe scheduling conflicts because their films can usually be shuffled to smaller screens to oblige commitments to studio suppliers.

“If we our able to hold our screens, does it affect the other guys?” said Disney’s Barlow. “Yes. It might mean that ‘Great Balls of Fire’ doesn’t get a third week. That may be unfortunate for Orion. But it all evens out. No one can predict with any great accuracy ahead of time what anyone else will do. There’s a tendency for pictures that have been overestimated for what they are supposed to do to make room for pictures that were underestimated.”

Helping to ease the crunch are several films that did not meet studio expectations at the box office. Columbia placed high hopes in its tandem of “Ghostbusters II” and “The Karate Kid III,” but the films are at a summer’s-end pace that will earn them less than half of what their predecessors grossed at the box office.

“ ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ ‘Roadhouse,’ ‘Renegades,’ ‘Pink Cadillac’--many thought (those films) were going to play longer, and they did not,” said Chan Wood, Pacific Theaters head film buyer. “There will be a number of important films opening late July, early August. By the time we get to them there will be pictures coming off the screen to make room.”

Ushering films into theaters involves a complex set of moves and negotiations in which the studio holds most of the keys. One film buyer called it a “seller’s market,” and said that a studio once threatened to withhold its product if he did not comply with the studio’s demands.

In negotiating for booking of major-studio movies, exhibitors commit to keep a film playing as long as it is performing above a predetermined level of business. The conflict occurs when the run of one studio’s film is extended beyond the opening date of another studio’s release.

The exhibitor who backs out of a film early is typically required to pay a penalty or a percentage of box-office receipts. To avoid this trap, some exhibitors engage in an illegal practice known as “double booking.”

“You do it on the sly,” said one industry source who asked not to be identified. “If you book a ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and have no faith in the picture--and sign a contract for six weeks--you might have a new film penciled in at Week Four. But you don’t tell the distributor of ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ Then you wait and keep your fingers crossed so you can call the distributor and say, ‘Your film is weakening. I have to take it off.’

“That’s what the smart booker does. All the time he has another film to put in.”

Compounding the scramble caused by Disney’s two surprise summer hits is the fact that the summer is less than half over and there are several potential hits on the way. Among the candidates: Columbia’s romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally . . . “ starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan; Universal’s domestic comedy “Parenthood” with Steve Martin; Fox’s underwater science-fiction thriller “The Abyss” directed by James Cameron, and Tri-Star’s serving of Sylvestor Stallone in the prison drama “Lock-Up.”

“There’s a balance of intelligence in the exhibition community that is going to hold onto the good pictures,” Disney’s Barlow said. “Now, (Disney) is certainly the beneficiary of that. There are times when we’ve been the victim of that. There’s some pressure--you’re doggone right there’s some pressure--but we’re not feeling it right now. We’ve felt it in the past, and we’ll feel it in the future.”