STUDIOS BANK ON BLASTS FROM THE PAST; CAN OLD FAVORITES WIN NEW FANS.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

Re-release fever has hit Paramount Pictures.

The Hollywood movie studio, which is responsible for such classics as ``The Godfather'' and ``Saturday Night Fever,'' is planning a major push for the 20th anniversary of ``Grease'' in an effort to tap into the blockbuster success of this year's revamped ``Star Wars.''

Despite its popularity in the movie theaters two decades ago and on cable television today, ``Grease'' is no gimmie. Reissues are one of the trickier areas of the brutally competitive business of movie exhibition.

``Paramount has their work cut out for them on `Grease' and I wish them well,'' said Michael Schlessinger, director of repertory sales at Sony Pictures. `` `Star Wars' was a phenomenon that occurs once or twice a century.''

Most studios limit releases from their vaults to a few well-chosen venues in major cities. That usually means showing the film at 50 to 100 screens for about a month or enough to generate as much as $2 million in ticket sales.

The exceptions have been this year's trio of ``Star Wars'' movies, re-released amid a massive campaign by 20th Century Fox, and a handful of animated Disney films like ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' and its current re-release of ``The Little Mermaid.''

Paramount hopes to reach the rarefied air of re-releases by cashing in on two fronts - baby boomers' nostalgia for their carefree childhood days and the attraction of a never-before-seen product for the core moviegoing audience of those under 30.

In this case, Paramount has one of the world's most recognizable movie stars in John Travolta, who resurrected his career in 1994 with ``Pulp Fiction'' and followed with a string of box-office hits: ``Get Shorty,'' ``Broken Arrow,'' ``Phenomenon,'' ``Michael'' and ``Face/Off.''

The studio also could have re-released Travolta's first career-making film, 1977's ``Saturday Night Fever.'' Instead, it will reissue ``Grease,'' owner of $400 million in worldwide grosses, on March 27, its 20-year anniversary.

The decision was fairly simple, according to Robert Friedman, Paramount's vice chairman. `` `Saturday Night Fever' is R-rated so if you go back out with it, you really can't get families to go,'' he said. `` `Grease' has always gotten a lot of positive reaction, a lot of head bobbing, and it's been our biggest catalog title in home video.''

Friedman said the studio plans to open on about 1,500 screens for the reissue. ``We're making a big deal of it,'' he said, adding that ``Grease'' also will be reissued in overseas markets. ``It was much bigger in foreign release than domestic, which didn't happen much in those days.''

Paramount has been scrambling to prepare ``Grease'' trailers for placement in front of movies during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, one of the heaviest moviegoing periods of the year. The two-minute trailer will open with black-and-white footage and promises of ``tight jeans, bad boys, cool girls.''

``For a reissue to work, you have to wait at least 15 years and get a younger market and parents,'' said Robert Bucksbaum, who heads the Reel Source forecasting service. ``I think `Grease' is a really good choice - it will attract a lot of young women and mothers bringing in their kids. The fact that it plays a lot on TV doesn't mean that much because nothing will ever take the place of seeing movies in theaters.''

Bucksbaum believes that if Paramount spends $5 million to $8 million to promote ``Grease,'' it can generate an opening weekend of as much as $10 million and may top $30 million - a solid return but nothing like ``Star Wars.''

``Star Wars,'' which grossed $322 million domestically in 1977, became a massive success all over again last winter. Fox tapped baby boomer nostalgia plus the fascination over five additional minutes of digitally enhanced footage. That led to domestic grosses of more than $140 million for the reissue, plus an additional $100 million combined for ``The Empire Strikes Back'' and ``Return of the Jedi.''

As for Disney, it has generated respectable figures from re-releasing one animated movie per year with the best performance coming in 1991 from ``101 Dalmatians'' with $60.8 million, followed by $46.6 million from ``Snow White'' in 1987. Speculation has emerged that its ``Beauty and the Beast'' will be re-released for the first time next year.

The success of the revamped ``Star Wars'' trilogy prompted studios to re-examine their libraries to see what other properties had reissue potential. ``For a while, people were walking around with stars in their eyes about `Star Wars' but anyone who thought they can just dust off one of their old movies and do the same is just insane,'' said Sony's Schlessinger.

Among those mentioned as possible re-release candidates were ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' ``Yellow Submarine,'' ``Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' and ``A Clockwork Orange.'' Sony was hoping for a 20-year re-release of ``Close Encounters'' but was unable to secure the blessing of director Steven Spielberg.

``We would like to do an anniversary re-release but anniversaries are not the end-all and be-all of repertory,'' Schlessinger said. ``It mostly depends on demand.''

Some upcoming possibilities from the Sony library mentioned by Schlessinger include the 50th anniversary of ``All the King's Men,'' the 30th anniversary of ``Oliver'' and the 25th anniversary of ``The Way We Were.'' Warner Bros. has scheduled a 25th anniversary reissue of Bruce Lee's ``Enter the Dragon'' on Feb. 20 but has not yet kicked off a major ad campaign for it.

The ``Star Wars'' movies and the Disney films received the same full-blast promo treatment accorded to new releases. By comparison, most reissues are marketed toward movie buffs with low-key campaigns stressing that the film has been restored, lengthened, re-scored or that it commemorates an anniversary.

``Vertigo'' pulled in $1.7 million last year; Paramount took in about $1 million last spring from the 25th anniversary re-release of ``The Godfather''; Sony's ``Das Boot,'' with a digital soundtrack and 65 minutes of new footage, took in $400,000 in April; and Live's 10-year anniversary reissue of ``Dirty Dancing'' topped $450,000 in four weeks late last summer.

Restoration activity is on the upswing since the ``Star Wars'' reissues, according to Greg Granello, president of EDS Digital Studios in North Hollywood. ``Every major post-production house in this area now offers digital restoration on their rate card,'' he noted.

EDS has launched a major push into digital restoration of movies, investing in eight $1 million Quantel Domino film-optical composition machines. ``We had to make a big investment in order to get economies of scale,'' he said.

EDS recently completed $1 million of work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for ``In the Heat of the Night.''

``MGM had gone as far as they could with traditional photo-chemical restoration,'' Granello said, adding that EDS solved problems with torn sprockets and ``flutter,'' or differing light intensity. An MGM spokeswoman said the studio has no plans to re-release the movie.

The operation also has completed a test restoration on part of ``Gone With the Wind'' for Warner Bros. and ``Yellow Submarine'' for MGM, which decided to pass on a re-release.

``We're soliciting more titles,'' Granello reports, noting that the emergence of DVD, digital versatile disc, may boost business. ``People need to understand that big titles deserve $1 million to $2 million restorations. If you're going to release something to DVD, you'd better restore it. Otherwise, the consumers will see the flaws.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) A stewardess, wearing Velcro shoes to combat anti-gravity forces, serves a meal in ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' originally released by MGM in 1968.

Photo illustration by Cecil Yates

(2--Color) THE POSSIBLE (``E.T. - The Extraterrestrial)

(3--Color) THE LONG SHOTS (``The Sound of Music''

(4--Color) THE ABSURD (``The Karate Kid'')