STICKER SHOCK : AFTER A JIM CARREY BOMB AND A DEMI MOORE BUST, WILL HOLLYWOOD SEE RELIEF FROM STAR SALARY INFLATION?

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Staff Writer

The mood at most Hollywood studios is euphoric this summer, with runaway hits like ``Independence Day,'' ``The Nutty Professor,'' ``Twister'' and ``Mission: Impossible'' contributing to the highest Fourth of July weekend ever at the box office.

But amid all the fireworks, there were still some duds in the mix - among them, ironically, the two projects that last year set the new high-water mark for star salaries.

Neither ``The Cable Guy'' nor ``Striptease'' are joining the summer hit parade, despite record high salaries paid to stars Jim Carrey ($20 million) and Demi Moore ($12.5 million) - salaries that created a domino effect in Hollywood and sent the cost of moviemaking spiraling.

Will the lackluster performance of these two pictures throw a big shadow over the industry and give studios the ammunition they need to zap big salaries back to saner levels?

Not likely, say most people in the business. ``You can't put the genie back in the bottle,'' said one Hollywood agent. ``Once a new high-water mark is established, it's set. I've never seen a trend of salaries going backwards.''

``The wheels have already been set in motion,'' said industry analyst Mike Yocco of Paul Kagan & Associates. ``It's like in baseball - when a starting pitcher gets a record salary, that becomes the new standard.''

Case in point: Julia Roberts, who this week landed $12.5 million for her next picture, ``My Best Friend's Wedding'' despite her inability to provide box-office salvation for flops ``Mary Reilly,'' ``Ready to Wear'' and ``I Love Trouble.''

``Because of the leverage that agencies have, star salaries have risen to a level that is probably disproportionate to the level of box office they bring in,'' said Dave Davis, a analyst with Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin.

``As long as the studios are standing in line waiting for the services of these stars, the salaries will be paid,'' said Eric Ashenberg, a talent manager at General Entertainment Management.

A year ago, when Columbia TriStar chairman Mark Canton blew the doors off the salary game by offering $20 million to Carrey, who had a string of $100 million-plus hits, for ``The Cable Guy,'' he declared that the investment made ``financial sense.''

``Jim Carrey has been magical around the world. The film will cost $40 million, and we'll make money,'' Canton said.

He may be right, but it will probably take overseas grosses and the home video market to do it. And it's hardly the slam-dunk hit Sony envisioned.

Regardless, moviemaking remains a high-risk business, and the recent head-spinning inflation in star salaries - in which not just the top names, but midlevel talents, too, are earning previously unheard-of amounts - has had industry players predicting disaster for some time.

``The entire business is out of control. There's no rationality to the prices being paid,'' said 20th Century Fox president Bill Mechanic last fall when the salary upswing began gaining momentum. ``At some point, I suppose, there'll be a cataclysm, a few people will lose a lot of money, and then people will say, `I just can't justify this spending anymore.' ''

But what's going on in the meantime?

``The industry is hungry for stars,'' said agent Geoffrey Brandt of the Brandt Co. ``We are in such desperation for stars, that the supply-and-demand climate allows this to happen.''

The number of movies produced by the studios each year has increased, while the pool of stars who are perceived - accurately or not - as capable of offering box-office insurance remains relatively small.

When a new star bursts onto the scene - such as Matthew McConaughey in the upcoming ``A Time to Kill,'' or Alicia Silverstone in ``Clueless,'' - the competition for his or her services is intense.

And when a known actor suddenly `gains new cachet because of a runaway hit, his price can skyrocket. Kurt Russell, for example, is getting $15 million for his next movie by Warner Bros. due to the successful ``Stargate.'' John Travolta, who was in a career slump at the time, earned $150,000 for ``Pulp Fiction.'' Now he's in the $20 million club with actors such as Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

But behind the scenes of the highly publicized salary wars, the industry is making its own contingency plans.

The latest wrinkle is a sudden affection for science fiction and special-effects movies in the wake of enormous business for ``Independence Day'' and ``Twister,'' neither of which relied on star power to pull in audiences.

`` `Independence Day' is blowing the roof off everything - without highly compensated stars,'' said Davis. ``If you look down the list of movies like `Star Wars,' `E.T.' and `Jurassic Park' that have grossed more than $200 million, few of them are star-driven.''

Other movie companies are attempting to repeat the low-cost, high-profit formula of films like ``The Usual Suspects'' or ``Pulp Fiction'' by using the cachet of respected independent directors to lure name stars into artier, less-expensive projects.

One recent example is ``Copland,'' a Miramax film from director James Mangold (``Heavy'') about a hearing-impaired sheriff in a small New Jersey town who must investigate a crime that appears to involve the NYPD cops he idolizes. Sylvester Stallone, for about a 10th of his top price, has agreed to play the sheriff, and the cast includes Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Annabella Sciorra, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Rapaport and Peter Berg.

But that doesn't signal relief for studios in the business of creating mainstream, high-impact movies. ``Stars will always take cuts for low-budget projects that are labors of love,'' said one agent. ``It's always been that way.''

That doesn't mean studios won't attempt to stage a backlash, but as one ta`lent manager points out, ``It's all cyclical.''

``We're entering into a phase where studios are going to try different strategies to keep salaries down and do cost-effective movies, but three years from now it'll get blown open again, and you'll be looking at a star who gets $40 million,'' said Ashenberg.

``Sooner rather than later, the pendulum will swing back to the other side,'' said Davis. ``I don't think we'll be seeing any massive increases for a while, but that doesn't mean salaries will come down. There's a lag time in Hollywood. Once stars reach a certain level, they tend to remain at that level until their films don't perform several times in a row.''

``The studio takes risks on every movie they make regardless of the budget,'' said Brandt. ``True, it would be a much healthier environment if there were salary caps tied to profit participation if a picture performed well.''

But it may be a case where the studios, by making it notoriously difficult for profit participants to collect, have dug their own graves.

``You've got to listen to what the client wants,'' said Brandt, an agent. ``And if the client wants the big upfront cash, your job is to listen.''

Box-office flops find new life in

foreign markets

``The Cable Guy,'' with approximately $55 million in box-office receipts, is on the verge of vacating theaters after just three weeks. With grosses dropping an alarming 65 percent over the Fourth of July weekend, the movie, which cost $40 million, is likely to make up in other markets what it doesn't return at the U.S. box office.

The price of marketing a film usually adds another 50 percent to the cost. (In the case of ``The Cable Guy'' it's more like 75 percent, reportedly $30 million.) The studios collect about 60 percent of a movie's box-office gross from theater owners.

So while Sony Pictures Entertainment will take a hit on ``Cable Guy'' at the U.S. box office, the film could still bring in profits in the huge overseas and home video markets.

```Foreign theatrical distribution has become a much bigger piece of the pie. There's a proliferation of new theaters around the world,'' said industry analyst Mike Yocco.

Moreover, said Yocco, recent technological advances like the development of the digital video disk - an uncopyable format that by 1997 may become an important new tool in the film industry's war against overseas video piracy - will also open new profit windows. ``Studios will be able to really control and enhance their revenues when a movie enters the overseas video window,'' said Yocco.

CAPTION(S):

13 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) MOORE: $12.5 MILLION

(2-- Cover--Color) CARREY: $20 MILLION

(3) Arnold Schwarzenegger: $20 million

(4) Michelle Pfeiffer: $9 million

(5) Sandra Bullock: $10.5 million

(6) Holly Hunter: $2.5 million

(7) Denzel Washington: $10 million

(8) Alicia Silverstone: $3 million

(9) George Clooney: $10 million

(10) Tom Hanks $20 million

(11) Jennifer Jason Leigh: $1 million

(12) Bruce Willis: $16.5 million

(13) Kurt Russell: $15 million

Box: Box-office flops live on in foreign markets (See Text)