Studio Scorecard

7 Dreamworks SKG
1998 Market Share 6.9%
The Year In Review The company's six-film slate yielded one Best Picture favorite with a $430 million-plus worldwide gross (Saving Private Ryan), one action film that took in $347 million globally (Deep Impact, like Ryan, a coproduction with Paramount), and, with Antz and The Prince of Egypt, two of the three highest-grossing non-Disney cartoons ever. So who cares about Small Soldiers?
New Year's Resolutions To get good buzz for a surprisingly low-key '99 lineup while it girds for a blockbuster-packed 2000.
High Hopes Unfazed by the flop In Dreams, DreamWorks is already looking ahead to the Ben Affleck-Sandra Bullock comedy Forces of Nature and the horror remake The Haunting of Hill House. But come 2000, it will boast two Robert Zemeckis films (one with Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt, one with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer), a Brad Pitt-Cameron Crowe collaboration, a sci-fi flick teaming Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise...
Trouble Spots ...and a $100 million gladiator film. (Why?) A big drawback: Since almost all of DreamWorks' expensive films are coproductions with other studios, the risks are split, but so are the returns.

8 Miramax
1998 Market Share 5.9%
The Year In Review After its blockbuster '97, what lineup wouldn't be disappointing? Rounders was no Good Will Hunting, The Faculty was no Scream, and Woody Allen's Celebrity proved only that an immovable object (his low grosses) is mightier than an irresistible force (Leo). But rapturous receptions for Shakespeare in Love and Life Is Beautiful are likely to keep Miramax's Oscar presence strong, and the success of movies as different as Halloween: H20 and Smoke Signals was a reminder of how skillfully the company can straddle the fence separating indies from studios.
New Year's Resolution To make sure that deserving small films don't get lost in a schedule encompassing more than 30 movies.
High Hopes For prestige, there's Meryl Streep in Fifty Violins, and adaptations of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. For big bucks, Kevin Williamson will offer the thriller Killing Mrs. Tingle. The $100 million-grossing question: Will the studio really be able to make Scream 3 for Christmas '99?
Trouble Spots Whatever they are, you'll never see them; Miramax's shelf of un- and barely released movies is the biggest in the industry.

9 Universal
1998 Market Share 5.5%
The Year In Review While Fox and Paramount released Titanic, Universal lived it. From well-reviewed underperformers (Out of Sight, the Babe sequel) to misconceived duds (Blues Brothers 2000, BASEketball) to what-were-they-thinking disasters (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), everything the now-departed duo of chairman Frank Biondi and film chief Casey Silver touched turned to red ink...that is, until the critically lambasted smash Patch Adams.
New Year's Resolution To sort out a messy internal structure that currently houses PolyGram, Gramercy, and October under the same roof. And some hits wouldn't hurt.
High Hopes Ironically, Biondi and Silver left president-COO Ron Meyer with a promising 18-film '99 lineup that includes two Eddie Murphy comedies (Life, opposite Martin Lawrence, and Bowfinger's Big Thing, costarring Steve Martin), a Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant romance, a Kevin Costner baseball movie, and the eagerly anticipated Ron Howard comedy EDtv.
Trouble Spots Arnold Schwarzenegger's battle-with-the-devil flick End of Days will cost at least $100 million and is already on its second director. And Jewel in a Civil War epic?!? We may secede.

10 MGM/UA
1998 Market Share 2.9%
The Year In Review Forever being bought, sold, restructured, or reinvented, MGM is rarely stable enough to compete with the big guns. But the company began '98 lucky, thanks to a different Leo the Lion — the one whose post-Titanic presence turned The Man In the Iron Mask into a midsize hit. From there, it was all downhill. Remember Disturbing Behavior? Dirty Work? Species II? No? That's why the studio's in 10th place.
New Year's Resolution To have one hit that doesn't involve James Bond.
High Hopes Come November, the 19th 007 film, The World Is Not Enough, should gross at least $250 million globally. Until then, look for MGM to put marketing oomph behind The Mod Squad, the sci-fi thriller Supernova, in-house favorite Pierce Brosnan's The Thomas Crown Affair, and Joel Schumacher's Robert De Niro comedy-drama Flawless.
Trouble Spots The company's occasional tone-deaf casting (hard-edged Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino in a mushy romance?) doesn't inspire confidence, nor does the remake- and sequel-heavy development slate (on tap: Rollerball, The Pink Panther, and Basic Instinct).

Market Share Source: Variety