Movie execs give '91 box office receipts a bad review.

Even a blockbuster holiday season won't change outlook

Movie industry experts hesitate to predict how the coming holiday movie season is going to pan out, but they agree on one thing for certain: Even a series of box office smashes will not be enough to pull Hollywood out of its current slump.

What a bog Tinseltown is in. Last summer's box office sales were off 11 percent from summer 1990, and "box office in September and October was dismal," said movie industry spokesman Jack Valenti at a recent seminar held in the Westin Bonaventure hotel.

"We are in a damnable recession or depression or cavity or whatever you want to call it," observed Valenti, chief executive officer and president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Around the corner is one of the year's most significant movie seasons, second only to summer. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas typically supply Hollywood with 25 percent of its annual box office revenue. This season 15 major pictures are expected to be released.

But although Christmas plays a major role in the film world, industry experts say even a season of blockbusters won't be enough to bring 1990 box office figures up to speed.

This year is expected to measure up as the third-biggest box office ever, behind 1990 and 1989. But that isn't good enough in the eyes of studio chiefs, who are still dubbing the year as dismal. Even a booming Christmas won't change that No. 3 ranking, said Alan Gould, an analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds brokerage firm in New York.

Looking even further onto the horizon, film critic Stephen Farber said he thinks it would take more than a blockbuster-filled Christmas to bring Hollywood out of the doldrums altogether.

"It does seem that the slump hits pretty deep," he said.

Looking at the movies themselves, the soon-to-be-released flicks are a diverse bunch, said Marc Mancini, a film professor at Loyola Marymount University. "There is a much greater diversity of films this time than ever before," he said. The selection of films includes comedies, dramas, adventures and animated features, among others.

Industry sources said the surest bets for success this hear can be placed upon "Hook," a Tri-Star film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Julia Roberts; New York-based Paramount Communications Inc.'s "The Addams Family," a comedy starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia; and Burbank-based Walt Disney Co.'s "Beauty and the Beast," an animated film.

Some of the other major films that will soon be hitting the screens are Tri-Star's "Bugsy," starring Warren Beatty; Columbia's "Prince of Tides," starring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte; and 20th Century Fox's "For the Boys," starring Bette Midler.

No wonder the film was so expensive, Mancini said, considering the cost of the talent involved and the tab to build the movie's elaborate sets. One pricey set made for the movie consisted of a full-scale pirate ship sitting in water inside a sound stage, he said.

Obviously, this season's slate of movies does not reflect the cost-cutting quagmire Hollywood has recently found itself in. The industry began practicing discretionary spending last winter as studios started rethinking the gobs of money going into blockbuster films.

But the coming holiday films were made before the industry became so concerned about cost, Farber said.

Films affected by the cost-cutting measures will more likely show up during spring and summer 1992, added Paul Marsh, an entertainment analyst with Kemper Securities, a Los Angeles-based brokerage firm.

The two studios that need Christmas cash the most are not even releasing any major films this season. MGM-Pathe Communications Co. is releasing one minor flick, "Rush," while New York-based Orion Pictures Corp. has nothing coming out.

Both companies are in serious financial straits and have verged close to declaring bankruptcy. MGM-Pathe lost $100.6 million on revenues of $292.5 million during first quarter 1991, ended March 31. Orion lost $24.8 million on revenues of $172 million during its first quarter, ended May 31, and has delayed the filing of its second quarter earnings and revenues.

Neither of the studios is releasing major films this holiday season because it is too expensive to promote movies then. A glut of movies are released during a concentrated period of time, and distributors have to spend heavily to saturate the market with promotions in holiday competition for audience share with all of the other movies, Gould explained.

Neither MGM-Pathe nor Orion "really has the money to properly promote a picture for the holiday season," he said.

Orion has a backlog of 12 films and is at the point where it needs the profits from one film just to release the next. "They are terribly backlogged with films," Mancini said.

Universal Pictures may pop a surprise hit this season, "At Play in the Fields of the Lords." This film has an ecological theme, and ecology is a big concern with this season's target audience, youth between the ages of 14 and 21.

"I think the studios have underestimated how passionately kids feel about the environment," Mancini said.