More Studios Open Theme Park Attractions That Tie Into Their Movies : Entertainment: MCA, Paramount, Walt Disney and Time Warner now control 13 of the top 20 most popular parks in the U.S. and Canada.

Even as he slowly dies at the box office, Batman performs at Six Flags theme parks to more applause than he ever received in Gotham City.

At Disneyland, the dainty Beauty and beastly Beast pose for snapshots and star in a daily stage show. Their likenesses are depicted as miniatures in elaborate souvenir shop window displays.

The worlds of movies and amusement are growing closer, as Hollywood studios seeking to prolong the life of hit films broaden their holdings to include theme parks.

The latest convert is Paramount Communications Inc., which announced two weeks ago that it is buying the Kings Entertainment Co. chain of four theme parks for $400 million.

“These parks are very profitable,” said Dennis Speigel, a theme park consultant in Cincinnati, Ohio. “It’s a logical extension of their business.”

Paramount joins Walt Disney Co., MCA and Time Warner in investing in major amusement parks. Collectively, they control 13 of the 20 most popular theme parks in the U.S. and Canada.

The film industry cachet on theme parks has become so important that Disney is tussling in court over financier Kirk Kerkorian’s planned use of the MGM Grand name for his new $1-billion movie hotel and theme park in Las Vegas. Disney maintains that it has exclusive rights to the name for its own Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Florida.

Sony Pictures Entertainment looked as if it might develop a “Sonyland,” but the idea died with the departure of chief proponent Jon Peters, the studio’s co-chairman.

The studios’ sudden interest in theme parks goes far beyond the lure of rides, characters and popcorn sales. Executives envision the parks as marketing machines for their movies and merchandise, and vice versa. The parks can become another avenue for tapping the public’s seemingly unquenchable interest in the glamour of Hollywood and its films.

“Those characters or those stories can become launching pads for amusement and attractions,” said Jeffrey Logsdon, entertainment analyst for Seidler Amdec Securities in Los Angeles.

But some industry observers see the studios’ thirst for theme parks as another passing fancy, similar to a wave of movie theater acquisitions a decade ago.

“Monkey see, monkey do,” chided Emanuel Gerard, a partner in the investment firm of Gerard, Klauer & Mattison in New York. Paramount, he said, could have used the money to reposition itself, rather than simply match the strategy of its competitors.

Paramount expects that its purchase of the four theme parks will allow it to develop rides and merchandise based on movies such as “The Addams Family” and “Top Gun.”

Its purchase includes Great America in Santa Clara, Carowinds in Charlotte, N.C., and Kings Dominion near Richmond, Va. It also bought Kings Island outside Cincinnati, which was owned by American Financial Corp. and operated by Kings, and will get a 20% ownership stake and operation contract for the Canada’s Wonderland theme park near Toronto.

Analysts say that Paramount paid a fair price and that Kings has a solid reputation. But the amusement park chain appeals to smaller markets than those served by Disney or Time Warner. The combined 11 million in annual attendance at the Paramount parks is roughly equal to estimates of last year’s patronage at Disneyland in Anaheim.

Paramount President Stanley R. Jaffe predicts that the former Kings theme parks “will create a significant awareness” of Paramount’s $1 billion in annual production of movies and TV shows.

Paramount whetted its interest in the park business by licensing the rights to its “Star Trek” movies and television series to Universal Studios Hollywood for an audience participation attraction. The agreement, however, does not preclude Paramount from exploiting the “Star Trek” series at its own parks.

Other studio-owned parks have been aggressively pushing their film characters on park patrons.

Time Warner started marketing its Warner Bros. movies through the 50% stake in the Six Flags parks that it purchased last year. The seven-park chain includes Magic Mountain in Valencia.

“It’s the only area of entertainment we were not represented in,” said Bob Pittman, president of Time Warner Entertainment and chairman of Six Flags. Theme parks give Hollywood a larger stake in the family entertainment arena, and “the ‘90s are the biggest family decade we have seen since the 1950s,” he said.

“Batman Returns” shows up as a bat-themed roller coaster at Six Flags Great America outside Chicago. Batman stunt and laser shows were created for Magic Mountain and five other Six Flags parks.

The Warner Bros. movie had fallen to eighth place among the summer’s box office offerings by the last weekend in July, but Six Flags officials say the Caped Crusader’s onstage adventures still pack the theme parks.

Batman is just the start. Six Flags will be a showcase for a broad array of Time Warner products, not only movies and television. Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, for instance, has a “Sports Illustrated All-Star Sports Fest” this summer.

As studios immerse themselves in the amusement park business, they will be following a model laid down decades ago by Disney, the acknowledged masters of milking every dime out of characters or films.

Weeks before Disney’s “Dick Tracy” movie was released in 1990, movie trailers of Warren Beatty and Madonna in starring roles were being shown continuously in Disneyland’s Main Street gift shops.

The new “Fantasmic!” pyrotechnics show, a $70-million extravaganza promoted throughout the West, plugs Disney films from the classic “Pinocchio” to the ill-fated “Newsies.” And a daily parade featuring Goofy hypes a new kids’ cable television show, “The Goof Troop,” premiering this fall.

Since major attractions take years of planning and construction, studios have to hope that moviegoers’ memories are long. Otherwise, after video rentals have peaked, they may not want to go to an attraction.

Disney is betting that Mickey’s Toon Town will be a hit among kids who saw the 1988 film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” Universal Studios Hollywood rolled out its lavish “E.T.--The Extra Terrestrial” ride last summer, nine years after the movie was released. Next comes a ride based on the long-gone “Back to the Future” trilogy.

The key to successful cross-promotion is to give the park’s staff plenty of advance notice, according to Linda Warren, a Disney vice president charged with seeing that each of the many Disney businesses takes maximum advantage of a new movie or event.

Warren said she took Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to Walt Disney World to brief the staff on the plot and characters of “Beauty and the Beast” two years before the movie premiered so that the staff could start planning.

“His excitement got everyone going,” she said.

Today, the Beauty and the Beast are as synonymous with the Disney parks as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Top 20 Amusement Parks

The top 20 amusement parks in the United States and Canada ranked by the number of visitors. * Rank: 1 Park/Location: Walt Disney World/Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 28 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Walt Disney Co. * Rank: 2 Park/Location: Disneyland/Anaheim Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 11.6 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Walt Disney Co. * Rank: 3 Park/Location: Universal Studios Florida/Orlando Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 6.8 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: MCA Inc./Universal * Rank: 4 Park/Location: Universal Studios Hollywood/ Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 4.6 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: MCA Inc./Universal Universal City * Rank: 5 Park/Location: Knott’s Berry Farm/Buena Park Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 4.0 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Knott’s family partnership * Rank: 6 Park/Location: Sea World of Florida/Orlando Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 3.4 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Anheuser Busch * Rank: 7 Park/Location: Sea World of California/San Diego Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 3.3 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Anheuser Busch * Rank: 8 Park/Location: Six Flags Magic Mountain/Valencia Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 3.2 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner * Rank: 9 Park/Location: Cedar Point/Sandusky, Ohio Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 3.0 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Cedar Fair Ltd. Partnership * Rank: 10 Park/Location: Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk/Santa Cruz Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 3.0 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Santa Cruz Seaside Co. * Rank: 11 Park/Location: Six Flags Great Adventure/Jackson, N.J. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.9 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner * Rank: 12 Park/Location: Busch Gardens/Tampa, Fla. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.89 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Anheuser Busch * Rank: 13 Park/Location: Kings Island/Kings Island, Ohio Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.8 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: American Financial Corp./Paramount * Rank: 14 Park/Location: Six Flags Over Texas/Arlington Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.7 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner * Rank: 15 Park/Location: Six Flags Great America/Gurnee, Ill. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.6 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner * Rank: 16 Park/Location: Canada’s Wonderland/Maple, Ont. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.4 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Kings Entertainment/Paramount * Rank: 17 Park/Location: Great America/Santa Clara Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.35 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner * Rank: 18 Park/Location: Kings Dominion/Doswell, Va. Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.32 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Kings Entertainment/Paramount * Rank: 19 Park/Location: Ontario Place/Toronto Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.3 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Ministry of Tourism, Ontario Prov. * Rank: 20 Park/Location: Six Flags Over Georgia/Atlanta Est. 1991 Attendance (in millions): 2.2 Ownership/Studio Affiliation: Six Flags/Time Warner Source: Amusement Business magazine, theme parks