A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : THE EARLY LINE : The Smart Money Is on the Bat Dude

Hollywood’s favorite summer sport--handicapping the summer movies--is in full swing, and theater exhibitors are already buzzing about which ones will be the most successful.

Although most of the summer films haven’t even been screened yet, most of the exhibitors polled picked “Batman Returns,” which flies into theaters June 19; “Alien 3,” which arrives May 22, and “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid,” which will be released July 17, as the films with the best chances for success. Exhibitors have seen “Lethal Weapon 3,” opening May 15, and they like that as well. Of course, these films are all sequels to earlier hits, which means they have a built-in audience “want-to-see” factor.

Movie exhibitors have to commit their theaters well before they see the finished films, particularly in the summer, which typically includes a lot of big-budget, special-effects-laden movies that are often being fine-tuned up until their release date. So, how do they handicap the soon-to-be-released films if they haven’t seen them? “A lot of what I go on is the audience reaction to a film’s trailer,” says one exhibitor. “There’s as much excitement surrounding the ‘Batman Returns’ trailer as there usually is with an entire movie.”

In addition, as Bill Spencer, a buyer for Portland-based Act III Theaters points out, exhibitors base their opinions on footage from movies usually screened at the film industry’s ShoWest convention, where most studios show “product reels” and trailers containing footage from their upcoming films. “You get a slight feel there,” he says, “but you can’t make a final judgment. Sometimes the trailer is the whole movie. It’s a good place to start.”

According to John Krier of Exhibitor Relations, though, the exhibitors are waiting to see most of the finished films. “In my opinion, the evaluation of which pictures will do well and which ones won’t, might change once they are screened,” he says. “That will also tell how big of a summer it’s going to be.”

But one exhibitor complained that the studios are slow in screening the summer releases. Referring to recent sneak previews of Columbia’s fall release “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in Seattle and San Diego, he said, “It amazes me that they have the Christmas pictures to show for themselves and for sneaks, but they don’t have the summer pictures to show for the exhibitors.”

Of course, there have been films that had the sweet smell of success and didn’t deliver the goods. Paramount’s highly touted 1990 duo, “Days of Thunder” and “Another 48 HRS.,” the follow-up to the smash “48 HRS.,” both performed much lower than many observers expected despite being picked by most of the exhibitors as potential blockbusters. On the other hand, last year, many exhibitors had doubts about “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” right up until the film opened, yet it became one of last summer’s biggest hits.

But every year there are sleepers, the films that nobody expects to perform as well as the often bigger-budgeted, more heavily promoted films, but then end up eclipsing them. Two recent examples are last year’s “City Slickers” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” in 1989. (Ironically, there are high expectations for this summer’s sequel, “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid.”)

This year, one of the most talked-about possible sleepers is Touchstone’s “Sister Act.” Exhibitors agree the film, which opens May 29, is a crowd pleaser. Another potential surprise is Universal’s “Housesitter,” which arrives June 12 and stars Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. One exhibitor pointed to Hollywood Pictures’ “Encino Man,” which features MTV’s Pauly Shore in his first starring role, as another possibility.

Most of the exhibitors are cautiously picking Ron Howard’s “Far and Away,” a period film starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, which opens May 22, to perform well, although some say they are concerned about the film’s two-hour-plus length and the fact that it’s an historical epic. “A period piece with costumes always makes a buyer nervous,” says Spencer. “We all remember ‘Barry Lyndon.’ We all got hurt on that one.”

And what about “Patriot Games,” the follow-up to “The Hunt for Red October,” which opens June 5, starring Harrison Ford, who replaced the original film’s star, Alec Baldwin? “Ordinarily,” says another exhibitor, “you’d have to pick it as a winner, because of Harrison Ford.” But memories of last summer’s “Regarding Henry” trouble some theater owners.

And after an absence of two years from the big screen, Eddie Murphy, one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, returns in Paramount’s comedy “Boomerang” on June 26. Exhibitors haven’t seen enough of it to know if it’s good or bad, but, one reminded, “Eddie Murphy has done business on bad films, so it could end up doing well.”

Like most theatergoers, the exhibitors are just going to have to wait and see. “The exhibitors are nervous,” says Krier. “They’re always nervous until they actually see the films. And then even after they see them, sometimes they’re still wrong.”