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Monday, May 27, 2002

Hollywood hits busy summer season at full throttle



By DAVID GERMAIN
AP Movie Writer

        LOS ANGELES — It's starting to feel like summer all year long for Hollywood, whose movie revenues have been running at blockbuster pace even in typically quiet months.

        With “Spider-Man” and the new “Star Wars” as lead-ins to a huge summer film lineup, the season is shaping up to break last year's domestic revenue record of $3.06 billion from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day.

        That follows an uncharacteristically robust winter and early spring resulting from strong 2001 carry-overs such as “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” and early hits that include “Ice Age,” “Panic Room” and “The Scorpion King.”

        Toss in grand results for “Spider-Man” and “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” and smaller successes such as “The Rookie” and “Changing Lanes,” and Hollywood revenues through last weekend hit $3.23 billion, 22 percent ahead of last year's pace, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks the box office.

        Factoring in estimated ticket-price increases over last year, movie admissions are up about 16 percent.

        “No question, it looks like we've gotten off to a great start, not only with high-profile pictures but really good performance of other pictures, as well,” said Jeff Blake, head of distribution and marketing for Sony, which released “Spider-Man” and has the summer's biggest slate, including “Men in Black II” and “Stuart Little 2.”

        By the end of this weekend, “Spider-Man” and “Attack of the Clones” will have combined for well over half a billion dollars in business alone. “Spider-Man” has shown great staying power, and “Star Wars” films always have long lives at theaters.

        Rather than audiences choosing one film or the other when “Attack of the Clones” opened last weekend, the “Star Wars” movie had a stellar debut while “Spider-Man” continued to draw big crowds.

        “The market just expanded to take both of them in,” said Bruce Snyder, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox, which released “Attack of the Clones.” “It shows there's room for two blockbusters at once, and I think there's quite a few more to come this summer.”

        On the strength of “Spider-Man” and “Attack of the Clones” plus three new films — the animated “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and the thrillers “Enough” and “Insomnia” — Memorial Day weekend grosses may beat last year's record of $185.3 million.

        Besides the “Men in Black” and “Stuart Little” sequels, which reunite the original stars and directors, major films still to come this summer include:

        “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” with Mike Myers returning as the toothy spy; Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg's “Minority Report”; “Road to Perdition,” starring Tom Hanks and directed by Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”); the live-action “Scooby-Doo”; “Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams”; Julia Roberts' latest film with director Steven Soderbergh, “Full Frontal”; Mel Gibson in “Signs,” from “The Sixth Sense” director M. Night Shyamalan; Adam Sandler's Frank Capra update, “Mr. Deeds”; and the espionage adventures “The Sum of All Fears,” “Bad Company” and “The Bourne Identity.”

        “I think we're looking at a record summer given the strength of the lead-in we've had and the momentum created by that,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Exhibitor Relations president. “There's also an orderly distribution of these big films. It's not all front-loaded in May and June. We've got potential blockbusters in each month of the summer.”

       



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