`GODZILLA' BIG, BUT DINOSAURS STILL BIGGER; `LOST WORLD' RECORD SURVIVES.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

Steven Spielberg can rest easy. The mega-lizard is no threat to his dinosaurs.

Early studio forecasts put ``Godzilla'' ticket sales for the long opening weekend, through today, at about $62 million in 3,310 theaters.

That's far short of the record $90.2 million grossed by Spielberg's ``The Lost World: Jurassic Park'' during the same Memorial Day weekend last year.

Sony's much-hyped ``Godzilla'' will finish its first week with around $80 million, including the $18.5 million collected in the first three days - through Thursday - it was shown. That's about $20 million behind the most optimistic of forecasts, but an impressive number just the same.

``It's a terrific opening,'' said analyst Arthur Rockwell of Drake Capital Securities in Santa Monica. ``The studio was hoping to do as well as `The Lost World,' given the heavy ad campaign, but it's not as if no one showed up.''

Sony executives, who began the ``Godzilla'' campaign a year ago, had no comment Sunday.

The movie, featuring a sleeker version of the monster trashing New York City, carried a $120 million price tag and a worldwide marketing budget in the same range. It remains a strong contender to reach the $200 million milestone and should rack up exceptional overseas performance.

Rockwell said the key factors preventing the opening of ``Godzilla'' from matching ``The Lost World'' were the similarities in the monster-on-the-loose projects and the stronger competition faced by ``Godzilla.'' Paramount's third weekend of ``Deep Impact'' was likely to draw about $20 million at 3,250 theaters, including today's showings. The comet-vs.-Earth epic will have hit the $100 million milestone after 18 days.

Also posting a solid performance was Disney's second weekend of ``The Horse Whisperer'' with $13 million at 2,039 sites.

Rockwell noted that the biggest rival for ``The Lost World'' during its opening weekend was ``Addicted to Love'' with $11.4 million.

`` `Deep Impact' has pretty decent legs for a movie of the disaster genre, and `The Horse Whisperer' held up fairly well,'' he said.

Finishing fourth was 20th Century Fox's nationwide opening of ``Bulworth,'' Warren Beatty's satire of a U.S. senator going through a nervous breakdown, with about $10 million at 2,048 theaters. Rockwell called the performance at the box office ``somewhat disappointing.'' The studio was unable to overcome moviegoer resistance to political product after less-than-stellar returns from ``Primary Colors'' and ``Wag the Dog,'' he said.

``Bulworth'' opened last weekend in two theaters with widely divergent critical reaction.

Early tracking showed Warner Bros.' second weekend of ``The Quest for Camelot'' coming in fifth with about $5 million at 3,107 theaters, edging Universal's opening of Hunter S. Thompson's ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' at 1,125 theaters. The film version of Thompson's much-admired saga of ``bad craziness'' received little support from critics.

Final figures for the weekend will be released Tuesday.