It pays to be angry

Call this the summer of our discontent: Movie studios made money, but moviegoing in the U.S. was down for a second straight year. An angry ogre in “Shrek 2,” an angry documentary filmmaker in Michael Moore and an angry scientist in “Spider-Man 2” did more to shake up and shape up the summer than anything else. If anything, most of the big guns wilted in the heat of competition with one major movie after another opening big, then fading fast.

And so the mantra became: “It’s a global/DVD/pay-per-view world after all.”

Come Labor Day, the box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI projects, the summer domestic box office will have taken in about $3.9 billion, a 3.6% increase over last summer. Rival tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. estimates the figure will be a little over $4 billion, but that includes the April 30-May 2 weekend, which EDI does not include in its projection. DreamWorks, which has had a slow start since its inception 10 years ago, ended the summer No. 1, with 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Sony and Universal, in that order, joining it to make up the top five studios. The only other summer DreamWorks came out on top was in 2000, when it had four solid performers: “Gladiator,” “What Lies Beneath,” “Chicken Run” and “Road Trip.”

While “Shrek 2” ruled, Michael Moore rocked the status quo on-screen and off. No one would have predicted that his scabrous jab at George W. Bush, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” would not only break records for a documentary -- it has grossed $117.5 million domestically to date -- but would also land among the top 10 films for the summer (it’s currently in ninth place for summer and 11th for the year).

Admissions, meanwhile, as of last week, had dropped 1.8% from last summer, which was down 2.6% from the record summer of 2002, according to Exhibitor Relations. This means the number of people going to the movies in the summer has declined 4.3% in the last two years.

The last time attendance declined in consecutive summers was in 1995, ’96 and ‘97, which posted respective drops of 5%, 2% and 1.3%, Exhibitor Relations said, but rebounded with a 14% increase in 1998 (“Saving Private Ryan” was the No. 1 movie in a season that included “Armageddon,” “Godzilla” and “There’s Something About Mary.”)

DreamWorks’ five-picture summer slate was lopsided, with “Shrek 2” grossing nearly $440 million, the most ever for any animated movie, and the other four taking in less than $100 million apiece. Of those, DreamWorks’ “Anchorman” took in the most, and was unquestionably a domestic hit. Two high-profile star- and director-driven projects -- Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks and Michael Mann’s well-reviewed “Collateral” with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx -- did less than the company had hoped for on home ground but are expected to do better overseas, particularly the Cruise film.

Despite the feeling after last summer’s onslaught that “audiences had tired of sequels,” noted Walter Parkes, DreamWorks’ head of production, “this summer showed that if you do a good job, audiences turn out for those films.”

The top three films of the summer were sequels, and they were the only ones to gross more than $200 million apiece: “Shrek 2,” with more than double that figure, is also the highest-grossing movie of the year; “Spider-Man 2,” with just less than $370 million to date; and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” which raked in about $247.1 million, the least amount for a Potter movie, but it was also the first of those films to be released in summer instead of November. “The Bourne Supremacy,” with $157.7 million and counting, was another successful sequel.

Only one of No. 2 studio Fox’s summer releases could be considered a sequel, but the franchise cocktail mix of “Alien vs. Predator” -- inspired by a successful videogame that pitted two of the company’s space aliens against each other -- performed well for the studio. Fox’s other summer successes came from films that had no predecessors, starting with the global-warming thriller “The Day After Tomorrow,” followed by Will Smith’s “I, Robot” and “Dodgeball,” starring Ben Stiller. With those, Fox was the only studio to have three summer films that grossed more than $100 million.

Twentieth Century Fox Chairman Tom Rothman said that even without any blockbusters “we had six hit films, all of which will be profitable for us,” including April’s “Man on Fire,” which starred Denzel Washington. Fox set an industry record of six consecutive movies that posted opening weekends of $20 million or higher.

Despite the downturn in admissions -- partly due to there being no big surprise hits such as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” no “Star Wars” release, and because Disney had a streak of bad luck -- “the movie business has always been and always will be a business that is not dependent on economic cycles,” Rothman said. “It’s more a matter of creative cycles.” Fox managed a strong summer without any $200-million U.S. grossers, big sequels or critical favorites.

And domestic figures are only part of the picture. Fox did far more business overseas with its top release, “The Day After Tomorrow,” than it did at home, as Warner Bros. did with “Troy” and the “Harry Potter” film, among others. In what has become a fact of life, almost all films, except for culture-specific comedies such as “Dodgeball” and “Anchorman,” do at least half and usually more of their business abroad.

Even with a decline in admissions, to Doug Belgrad, who with Matt Tolmach is co-president of production at Sony’s Columbia Pictures, “it doesn’t feel like this was a down summer.”

“Any individual year you’ll be up or down,” Belgrad said. But rather than obsess too much over numbers, Tolmach said, “all we can focus on is trying to make good movies. And it may be that in a given year there are more or fewer movies that people want to see.”

When what people want to see is a smaller film with a modest budget, something they did this summer, the payoff for the studios can be significant.

Belgrad cited “Mean Girls” (Paramount Pictures’ highest-grossing movie of the year with about $86 million), New Line’s “The Notebook,” “Anchorman” and Sony/Revolution Studios’ “White Chicks” as films that didn’t rise that high but still grossed between $70 million and $86 million. Because they were “made for a price” and reached the right audience, they “were enormously profitable.”

Tolmach, Belgrad and other executives also pointed to Fox Searchlight’s “Garden State” and “Napoleon Dynamite” as extremely successful smaller-scale movies.

Universal Vice Chairman Marc Shmuger also feels that “this has been a good summer overall, and the business is healthy. But there were so few surprises, not counting ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ Everybody would have predicted the top two movies would be ‘Shrek 2’ and ‘Spider-Man 2,’ and in fact it turned out that way.”

Universal had two films among the top money-makers. While “Van Helsing” didn’t perform as well here as the company had hoped, it is expected to gross about $300 million worldwide, Shmuger said.

“Bourne” is on track to do $350 million worldwide, Shmuger added. Another installment is virtually assured because the company believes “it has a lot of vitality as an ongoing property,” he says.

Other executives agreed with Rothman that the domestic market has matured and that attendance fluctuates but with DVDs “the revenue pool continues to expand.” Shmuger noted that because theatrical revenues and admissions still have a lot of potential for growth overseas, “in the international market, if you can get the pictures right, it can really pay off.”

With only 11 movies grossing $100 million or more this summer, compared with 17 in the same period last year and 14 in ‘02, did the number of wide releases this summer dilute the performance of some movies?

Apparently not. There were actually fewer films opening in 3,000 theaters or more this summer, according to the tracking firm Nielsen EDI, but the average number of theaters for those films rose, due largely to “Shrek 2” and “Spider-Man 2” opening in more than 4,000 locations. This summer saw 18 wide-release movies (averaging 3,411 theaters each), compared with 21 last summer (average of 3,315 theaters) and 15 in 2002 (3,301 theaters).

Deep declines did mark the summer, with many big openings followed by second-weekend drops of as much as 60%, according to numbers posted by the box office tracking website Boxofficemojo.com. Of this year’s top five films, the 33% decline of “Shrek 2” was the smallest, with the others falling from 49% to 60%.

One fallout from this phenomenon is that films take in a bigger-than-ever share of their total gross in their first weekend of wide release.

“Even four or five years ago,” DreamWorks’ Parkes said, “you wouldn’t expect a movie’s opening weekend to account for 25% of its total gross.” That’s roughly the percentage for “Shrek 2” and “Spider-Man 2.” For the rest of the top five films, their opening take represents a third or more of their total.

The summer’s biggest surprise paid off handsomely for one company. Disney’s refusal to allow Miramax to distribute “Fahrenheit 9/11” served only to raise the profile of the film and of the independent company that eventually released it, Lions Gate Entertainment.

Political orientation aside, from a strictly business perspective, “it was the right movie at the right time,” said Tom Ortenberg, Lions Gate’s distribution president. “We were fortunate enough to have a filmmaker like Michael Moore who has become as much of a brand name as anyone in the business.”

The film’s $117.1 million, along with the $23.5 million to date for “Open Water,” propelled Lions Gate to No. 8 among all distributors, ahead of New Line, MGM and Fox Searchlight. “Fahrenheit” became the company’s biggest-ever release, a slot previously held by “The Punisher,” with $33.8 million.

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Summer kings

Led by “Shrek 2,” DreamWorks movies took in more money than those of any other studio. It’s only the second time the young company has dominated a summer. The first was 2000, when DreamWorks released “Gladiator,” “What Lies Beneath,” “Chicken Run” and “Road Trip.”

Top film distributors: The top five distributors took in 82.76% of this summer’s domestic gross.

Domestic gross* New films/ Distributor (In millions) pre-summer releases

DreamWorks SKG $672.9 4/1 20th Century Fox 605.1 5/6 Warner Bros. 531.3 7/7 Sony 486.2 4/4 Universal 355.4 5/2

*May 5 through Aug. 22

Top summer draws: Films that grossed $100 million or more:

Domestic gross* Rank/Title (Distributor) (In millions)

1 Shrek 2 (DreamWorks) $436.7 2 Spider-Man 2 (Sony) $366.2 3 Harry Potter and the $247.1 Prisoner of Azkaban (Warner Bros.) 4 The Day After $186.1 Tomorrow (Fox) 5 The Bourne $157.7 Supremacy (Universal) 6 I, Robot (Fox) $139.3 7 Troy (Warner Bros.) $133.3 8 Van Helsing (Universal) $120.1 9 Fahrenheit 9/11 (Lions Gate) $117.5 10 Dodgeball (Fox) $113.2 11 The Village (Disney) $108.6

*All figures through Thursday Source: Nielsen EDI Inc.