HOLLYWOOD HEAT WAVE SUMMER OF STARS, CONCEPTS EXPECTED TO MELT BOX OFFICE RECORDS.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

It's time for another encounter with ``The Force,'' real-life versions of ``Spider-Man'' and ``Scooby Doo,'' scores of sequels, and ambitious movies headlined by the ever-reliable box office quartet of Gibson, Ford, Hanks and Cruise.

The days of summer - the most profitable time of year for the movie industry - are fast approaching and Hollywood's major studios are shifting into overdrive during this annual competition for box office supremacy.

The roster of big-budget crowd-pleasers is so jam-packed that the industry is expected to easily top last summer's record box office haul of $3.06 billion, representing 40 percent of 2001's total box office take.

``It will obliterate last summer,'' predicts Robert Bucksbaum, president of Reel Source, a box office analysis firm. ``This will be the biggest summer in history, just one blockbuster after another.''

Once again, the summer movie season is almost exclusively a time for the sure-fire crowd-pleasers, not the time for Hollywood to trot out the kind of challenging or risky films that might earn Academy Award nominations.

``There is so much money at stake and there is so much competition,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. ``Anything that helps the movie, be it a big star of a familiar face or concept is a way to hedge your bets and ensure a better chance of success at the box office.''

``Spider-Man,'' the film version of the escapades of the masked Marvel hero, is considered to be such a can't-miss hit that a sequel is already in the works. The May 3 Columbia Pictures release is expected to own the box office crown until May 16 when it bumps into what is virtually assured of being the king of the year's blockbusters, ``Star Wars-Episode II: Attack of the Clones'' from Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox (each of the previous four films in the franchise are among the highest-grossing movies of all time).

In addition to the new ``Star Wars,'' other sequels expected to attract the masses include Sony's' ``Men in Black 2'' which reunites Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as agents fighting against space aliens; Miramax Films' ``Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams''; New Line Cinema's ``Austin Powers in Goldmember;'' the horror film ``Halloween: Resurrection'' from Dimension Films; and the family film ``Stuart Little 2'' from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

``I think last summer helped prove that with the right sequel, you can bring in a huge audience,'' said Gitesh Pandya, president of BoxOfficeGuru.com. ``There were huge grosses for 'Mummy Returns,' 'Rush Hour 2,' and 'American Pie 2,' all of which were bigger than their predecessors.''

While not technically a sequel, Paramount Pictures' ``The Sum of All Fears,'' is part of a franchise based on a series of Tom Clancy novels. Ben Affleck takes over the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan from Ford who portrayed Ryan in ``Patriot Games'' and ``Clear and Present Danger.''

These are amazingly robust times for the domestic box office with some kind of new record being set virtually every week during peak holiday periods. In 2001, the industry grossed a record $8.41 billion and enjoyed the highest number of admissions since the height of the Cold War (1.5 billion tickets).

The breakneck pace has carried over to 2002. Even the historically slow box office period of January, February and March was red-hot this year. On the strength of such hits as ``Ice Age,'' ``Panic Room,'' ``Blade 2,'' and ``Black Hawk Down,'' the industry grossed a whopping $2.2 billion during that period, an unprecedented figure and well ahead of last year's record pace.

``It's going to be a very, very competitive summer,'' Dergarabedian said. ``We will see a lot of records broken and a lot of satisfied moviegoers who will be pulled in a lot of different directions.''

Box office kings return

Summer 2001 raked in record revenue even though it lacked such consistent drawing cards as Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson. The only sure-fire box office star to appear in a major release last summer was Julia Roberts in ``America's Sweethearts'' who isn't appearing in a summer film in 2001.

``Last year was a record-breaking summer without the stars,'' Dergarabedian said. ``It was all about the concepts and there were huge concepts like 'The Mummy Returns' and 'Fast and the Furious.' This year, not only do we have the big concepts, we also have the big stars attached to them.''

Pandya thinks that Cruise's ``Minority Report,'' to be released June 21 by Paramount, will represent a return to box office glory for director Steven Spielberg whose ``A.I. Artificial Intelligence'' was one of the biggest box office disappointments of last summer. Also, Cruise's ``Vanilla Sky'' took four long months to cross the $100 million mark, slower than usual for a typical Cruise picture.

``Spielberg and Cruise are two A-list brand names, it's almost impossible to go wrong with those two together,'' Pandya said. ``I'm bullish on the film but it is beyond what we see Tom Cruise do in an action film. We'll have to see how it does as an action film.''

July will see a return to the summer screen of Ford in Paramount's Russian submarine drama, ``K-19: The Widowmaker'' and Hanks will star in ``Road to Perdition,'' playing against type as a hit man in the gangster drama from DreamWorks.

Pandya thinks Gibson will also add to his long list of major hits with the Disney thriller ``Signs'' which is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, the maker of ``The Sixth Sense'' and ``Unbreakable.''

``It's more adult-skewing, serious film and opening the first weekend of August,'' Pandya said. ``By that time, the moviegoer is a little sick of the mindless popcorn films of early summer and ready for something more serious.''

Not just for boys

In Bucksbaum's view, this summer's release slate is much more balanced than the testosterone-charged 2001 offerings. This time around, there are more family-oriented movies like ``Stuart Little 2,'' Disney's ``Lilo & Stitch'' and ``The Country Bears,'' DreamWorks' ``Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,'' Warner Bros.' ``The Powerpuff Girls,'' Paramount's ``Hey Arnold! The Movie,'' and ``Spy Kids 2.''

``Family movies drive the box office,'' said Bucksbaum, whose company advises movie theater owners on the box office prospects of upcoming releases. ``That's what keeps theaters in business, because families buy concessions and families last, they aren't out of the market in a few weeks. The parents try and avoid the crowds of opening weekend and if they like a movie, they'll go again and again.''

There are also several female-skewing movies that Bucksbaum believes will find an audience amid more high-profile competition including Warner Bros.' ``Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood'' featuring box office favorites Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd as well as Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Maggie Smith. He is also bullish on Universal's ``About a Boy'' starring Hugh Grant and Toni Collette (``Muriel's Wedding'').

``This summer has what the box office needs: diversity,'' Bucksbaum said. ``It had been the consensus that you had to release popcorn movies. The industry will use this summer as an example for future summers and I think we'll see comparable schedules in years to come.''

Hot summer weekends

With such a glut of high-profile releases competing for room at the megaplexes, experts expect to see a repeat of last summer's pattern where many films opened to record-breaking numbers only to drop by 50 percent or more by their second weekend.

While a big opening weekend is always a goal of a studio, last year crystalized a trend where a majority of a blockbuster's tickets were sold right out of the gate. Moviegoers - especially the younger crowd - flocked to theaters to be among the first to see such films as ``Jurassic Park III,'' ``Planet of the Apes'' and ``Rush Hour 2.''

``I think summer movies have become so front-loaded that there are incredible amounts of money being spent on marketing which really pushes the opening weekend,'' Pandya said. ``With so much prerelease marketing and the exorbitant amount of screens, they soak up so much more of the total demand in the first three days.''

With more than 35,000 screens in the United States, there is no shortage of screens in which to provide films with a wide release. In some cases, the biggest hits are on several screens at the same multiplex with screening times every hour or even half-hour.

For the studios, big opening weekends not only give them bragging rights and the all-important winning perception, but also provides them with a bigger percentage of the box office take since the theater chains make most of their money the longer a film plays on.

``It will be very difficult to have a any film stay in the No. 1 spot for very long,'' said Dergarabedian. ``It's so competitive. Even if you are a huge film, the audience is migrating to the next blockbuster.''

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Photo:

(1 -- 5 -- color) Clockwise from top, New Line Cinema's ``Austin Powers in Goldmember;'' Columbia Pictures' ``Spider-man;'' Disney's thriller ``Signs'' stars Mel Gibson; Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox offer up ``Star Wars-Episode II: Attack of the Clones,'' and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back in Sony's ``Men in Black 2.''

(6) Among the more family-oriented fare are movies like ``Disney's animated feature ``Lilo & Stitch.''