Box Office Report

6. The Client Lesson: Bank on best-sellers. With a resume that also includes The Firm and The Pelican Brief, novelist John Grisham has become a bigger star than most of the stars of his movies-which may be why shortly after The Client opened, New Regency forked over more than $6 million for his '89 novel, A Time to Kill. Like techno-novelist Tom Clancy (who also had a hit-by-proxy in Clear and Pres-ent Danger), Grisham makes Hollywood's job easier. "A Grisham book sells 2 million hardcover and 3 million softcover before it comes out," explains one studio executive. "More people came to see Pelican Brief because of Grisham than because of Julia Roberts. (Susan) Sarandon and (Tommy Lee) * Jones are good actors, but people go because of Grisham."

7. Beverly Hills Cop III Lesson: The era of comedy sequels is over. "The series should have been put to bed after the second," said one distribution chief after taking in the tired re- retread of Eddie Murphy's 1984 smash. Financially speaking, he was right: Cop III didn't even reach 20 percent of the first film's take, and the bottom line was just as grim for Billy Crystal's saddle-sore City Slickers II. "Audiences want the same-but different," says one exec. "The third Indiana Jones worked because they added Sean Connery. But City Slickers made no effort to be different. And Eddie Murphy can't carry a bad movie anymore." When anyone with fond memories of an original can rent it on video, sequels are no longer a sure laugh.

8. The Flintstones Lesson: Baby-boomer brand names still sell. A big-budget remake of an old TV title is recycled pop that trades on automatic name recognition. Boomers and their kids were eager to see how producer Steven Spielberg turned the '60s cartoon The Flintstones into a live-action movie; The Little Rascals benefited from years of reruns; and adults flocked to see some of their favorite actors in the hip repackaging of Maverick. Only when Universal reached way back to radio for The Shadow did moviegoers' memories go blank. So in 1995 and '96, don't be surprised to see big-screen remakes of Sgt. Bilko, The Honeymooners, The Brady Bunch, Mission: Impossible, and Lost in Space.

9. The Lion King Lesson: If you're making kid flicks, make sure kids will like them Disney's first animated movie to debut in the summer since 1986 reaped huge dividends, while other companies that tried to invade its turf proved no match for the Mouse. The secret? Disney has mastered the art of pitching its movies to kids and parents. "If you only sell to parents, you end up with Lassie and Black Beauty-movies no child wanted to see," says one studio executive. Nor did it hurt that Lion King starred a prepubescent boy-cub, since it's an all-but-proven double standard that girls will see "boy movies," but boys won't go near "girl movies" like Beauty and Andre.

10. North Lesson: ...but remember that parents buy the tickets. "People lost a lot of money trying to make family movies," says Pollock-especially when they turned out kids' movies that no self-respecting parent would line up for. Who could blame Mom and Dad for refusing to take their children to see North (in ^ which Elijah Wood ditches his self-absorbed parents), Getting Even With Dad (with Macaulay Culkin wreaking revenge on neglectful, dim-witted Ted Danson), or producer John Hughes' Baby's Day Out (about three big-city criminals who kidnap a baby)? For parents, the best news of the summer is that Hollywood-and even Hughes-may finally leave Home Alone alone. *