PLAYING `THE GAME'; DILEMMA: DRAWING AUDIENCES TO EDGY, RISKY STORY WITH UNLIKABLE PROTAGONIST.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

``Many pictures I make have a danger factor,'' Michael Douglas says.

And ``The Game'' is another one. A precision-crafted, chilly thriller with Douglas as its unlikable protagonist, the new film continues the tradition of edgy, commercially risky projects - ``Fatal Attraction,'' ``Wall Street,'' ``Basic Instinct,'' ``Falling Down,'' ``Disclosure'' - that have made the actor an international superstar.

But an extra degree of anxiety accompanies ``The Game's'' nationwide release today. Not only are we expected to sympathize with Douglas' Nicholas Van Orton, an emotionally isolated, rich jerk whose financial empire crashes around him when he's enrolled in a life-altering and perhaps deadly virtual adventure. The complicated suspense story is also the first release from PolyGram Films, the international music giant's splashy step into major American movie distribution.

And this two weeks before another, splashier start-up company, DreamWorks, releases its first movie, ``The Peacemaker.''

``We want to achieve what the other studios are doing out there,'' says PolyGram's marketing group president Peter Graves. ``Match them play for play, lick for lick, and be able to do that with a much reduced head count, smaller departments.''

No pressure here.

``I've worked on this script for six years, and when you invest that amount of time in anything, there's a lot at stake,'' says ``Game'' producer Steve Golin, who is also a founding partner of Propaganda Films, a PolyGram-owned production company whose product (such as last year's ``Sleepers'' and next week's ``A Thousand Acres'') has traditionally been distributed by established studios. ``The idea that it's the first film released by the new distribution company makes the stress a lot greater.''

One factor alleviating the tension was director David Fincher, another one of Propaganda's co-founders. The last time out, Fincher made ``Seven,'' a movie industry insiders considered too dark to sell. (``The first time I showed `Seven' to anyone in the industry,'' the soft-spoken Fincher recalls, ``somebody said to me, `How could you take a perfectly good genre movie and turn it into a foreign film?' '') The thriller became a huge fall hit.

``I always knew `The Game' was going to be PolyGram's first feature, but that didn't add any extra angst to the making of it,'' Fincher says. ``Of course, I have a kind of controllable myopia. It's no help to you to worry about that kind of stuff, or about equalling the success of `Seven.' There's just no calculated way to do that.''

Indeed, Fincher had enough on his mind just trying to keep ``The Game's'' multiple layers of reality and deception straight. After Van Orton's wastrel younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) gives Nicholas a very unusual birthday gift, the millionaire's life becomes increasingly subject to staged crises and a small army of people who aren't who they claim to be.

Tough to coordinate. And it would have been even tougher if things with Jodie Foster had worked out. A big fan of ``Seven,'' the Oscar-winning actress expressed interest in participating in ``The Game,'' eventually zeroing in on the small but key role eventually played by Penn.

But that would have necessitated changing brother Conrad to, presumably, sister Connie. Doable, but Foster reportedly wanted the character changed further, from Van Orton's sibling to his daughter. Douglas disliked that idea; Foster left the project and filed a lawsuit, which was settled quietly.

``There was confusion about how that character should be portrayed, and I guess I have to take a lot of the responsibility for the misunderstanding,'' Golin admits. ``It just got out of hand and I could have managed it better.''

But Golin, Fincher and Douglas agree that scheduling considerations for the complicated shoot would have made Foster's participation problematic anyway.

``It had always been written as my younger brother, but there was also a real scheduling problem,'' Douglas says. ``Jodie was getting ready to do `Contact,' and that meant I would have had to shoot all of my big scenes with her at the beginning of the production. I wasn't really looking forward to that.''

The notoriously picky Penn was uncharacteristically eager to fill in. But he's not being typically evasive when he refuses to discuss details of his work. Indeed, he'd ruin much of the ``Game''-watching experience if he did.

``It's a difficult film to talk about without giving it away,'' Penn says. ``There are big surprises in it and the plot depends on them.''

``What I loved about the script was that you didn't know where it was going,'' adds Douglas. ``You can't say that about most movies out there.''

You have a hard time saying anything about ``The Game'' if you're trying to sell it to a wide audience, too.

``It's not an easy movie to sell because there's a lot that you can't give away in the ads,'' Golin notes. ``There were a lot of great images that Dave didn't want to see in the promotional materials. We worked very hard to have the strongest materials we could without blowing the film's - and I don't want to use the term, but that's the kind of thing it is - gimmick.''

Speaking of gimmicks, PolyGram came up with a pretty spectacular one when they ran a 90-second ``roadblock'' - a commercial that ran simultaneously on the four major networks and key cable TV outlets - in the middle of prime time on Aug. 17.

``That was certainly new and different,'' notes marketing head Graves. ``And it worked extremely well; awareness of the film almost doubled after that. And we've tried to incorporate the `can't show' aspect of the film into our strategy from the start. We've been teasing it as much as possible, build up the idea that this film takes you to a place you haven't been before.''

The innovative marketing approach reflects PolyGram's eclectic, at least in the near-run, filmmaking philosophy. Following ``The Game,'' the company's slate includes the incongruous-sounding teaming of iconoclastic director Robert Altman with a John Grisham story, ``The Gingerbread Man'' (this week, the company decided to go with Altman's version of the film after a studio-supervised cut received tepid scores from test audiences); Vincent Ward's metaphysical romance ``What Dreams May Come,'' with Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.; John Goodman in the children's book adaptation ``The Borrowers''; and the self-explanatory ``Barney's Great Adventure.''

``PolyGram is exciting in that their philosophy is to really go with some talented filmmakers and to back them in a strong way,'' says Douglas, himself a noted producer (``Face/Off,'' ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' Francis Coppola's upcoming Grisham film ``The Rainmaker''). ``Hopefully, it'll pay off for them. They're about treading in unknown waters. And this picture's a pretty weird picture, goes against the grain.''

But not that much against it, which industry observers say bodes well for PolyGram's future capacity to play the big game.

`` `The Game' is a very good story with a major, important star and director,'' observes Irwin Winkler, the Oscar-winning producer of ``Rocky,'' ``Raging Bull'' and ``Goodfellas.'' ``They've made this wonderful, big, adventuresome film as well as any (established) studio would make it.''

``Because they've taken a cautious approach to entering the American market, I think PolyGram's chance of success is probably higher than a lot of other companies' that have challenged the studios,'' adds David Davis, vice president of the investment banking firm Houlihan, Lokey, Howard and Zukin. ``They've taken what they've learned in the record business and are seeing if that can work with movies here.''

Graves says ``The Game'' represents the new company as a whole.

``I'd like the hallmark here to be tThe desire to be experimental and provocative,'' Graves explains. `` `The Game' itself happens to be very unusual and intense; part of what we're selling is its uniqueness, that you haven't been on this ride before.

``Our research tells us that audiences are tired of seeing the same thing all the time. While I don't think they want something radically different, I do think they're looking for a fresh and exciting approach.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) GETTING INTO `THE GAME'

Michael Douglas and PolyGram play the `danger factor'

(2) Risk-taker Michael Douglas portrays the recipient of a scary birthday gift in ``The Game.''

(3) `I always knew ``The Game'' was going to be PolyGram's first feature, but that didn't add any extra angst to the making of it. Of course, I have a kind of controllable myopia. It's no help to you to worry about that kind of stuff, or about equalling the success of ``Seven.'' There's just no calculated way to do that.'

Director David Fincher, left, with Michael Douglas