Which may be why the studios seem to be celebratory in spite of themselves. As Labor Day rolls around, more than $2.5 billion in movie tickets will have sold since Memorial Day (another record; last year's take was $2.2 billion). True, there wasn't a Men in Black or Independence Day (some advice to the studios: If you're going to overpay someone, overpay Will Smith). But execs with steady nerves say there's no reason to panic. "The industry's not in shock because we didn't have a $300 million movie this summer," says Tom Sherak, senior executive VP at Fox Filmed Entertainment. "I'll take a lot of $100 million movies over one big $500 million movie any day." As long as those movies don't cost $200 million to make.
Winners
ARMAGEDDON Projection: $200 million Disney overspent wildly (close to $200 million with marketing) but wound up with summer's top grosser, and it's already at $150 million--and soaring--overseas. We'll toss in another $50 million if they promise not to make a sequel.
DEEP IMPACT $141M Mimi Leder's comet-hits-earth flick, made for a relatively cheap $80 million, took in $320 million worldwide; the Paramount/DreamWorks coproduction is the biggest hit ever directed by a woman.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN $190-200M The $65 million smash is the first Oscar contender for DreamWorks (which coproduced with Paramount)--but with Spielberg and Hanks taking huge cuts, it's not the quick fix the studio needs.
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY $150-160M Made for just $24 million, the spunky comedy, the first word-of-mouth smash since Scream, made stars of Cameron Diaz and the Farrellys, and gave Fox this summer's most profitable film.
HONORABLE MENTIONS Paramount's Truman Show was even bigger than Jim Carrey's Mask and Ace films; Eddie Murphy scored with both Disney's Mulan and Fox's Dr. Dolittle; Miramax's $17 million Halloween: H20 proved that cheap thrills can yield solid profits.
Losers
THE AVENGERS Projection: $25 million Summer's noisiest (and, at $65 million before marketing, costliest) bomb was another embarrassment for recently flop-plagued Warner. Who greenlighted this--and did they read the script first? FEAR & LOATHING... $11M They said Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo-journalism classic was unfilmable. They were right.
BULWORTH $27M Writer-director-producer-star Warren Beatty's attempt to woo the hip-hop crowd with a mix of rap and politics scared older moviegoers away and left younger ones indifferent.
MAFIA! $19-20M WRONGFULLY ACCUSED $10-12M In a summer when hits from Armageddon to Halloween: H20 seemed to be winking at themselves, out-and-out movie parodies were dead in the water--especially with targets as stale as The Godfather and The Fugitive.
HALL OF SHAME MGM's Disturbing Behavior proved teens know a Scream rip-off when they (don't) see one; Universal's BASEketball showed that South Park's creators are many things, but not movie stars; Warner's $60 million Quest for Camelot illustrated that 'toons can be a money pit too.
