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Movies - Variety Christmas Crush at Box Office

By David Bloom

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Unless you are releasing a mega-budget tentpole, this November and December is shaping up as the holiday season from You-Know-Where.

Big films, including a record 10 sequels and remakes, bulge the release schedule nearly every weekend between Nov. 1 and Dec. 27, punctuated by a 13-picture year-end traffic jam of films with Oscar pretensions.

And if it's bumper-to-bumper kudos seekers on the regular timetable, what will happen in 2004 when the earlier Oscar deadlines take effect?

The four biggest sequels stand astride the road to Christmas like cinematic colossi -- the second "Harry Potter ( news - web sites)" (Nov. 15), the 20th James Bond (Nov. 22), the 10th "Star Trek" (Dec. 13) and the second "Lord of the Rings" (Dec. 20). Other follow-ups include "Santa Clause 2," "Analyze That," "Friday After Next" and "Shanghai Knights." Updates of "Solaris" and "I Spy" are due in November.

"It's frightening," said DreamWorks studio executive Walter Parkes. "It's like summer but worse, in a way."

Worse because it's a much more compressed period. During the summer, smaller pictures can usually find a weekend somewhere to land. But not this full-to-bursting holiday season.

The formidable roster includes several big battles:

"The Santa Clause 2" will try to sleigh TV spinoff "I Spy" while going deep on "The Core" Nov. 1; Eminem ( news - web sites) debut "8 Mile" raps Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale ( news - web sites)" Nov. 8; and, during the year's packed last weekend, "Catch Me If You Can" and "Gangs of New York," both with top directors, both with Leonardo DiCaprio, will vie with each other.

"There's really nowhere you can put a film with nobody around," said MGM domestic distribution president Erik Lomis, who at least has the Bond picture "Die Another Day" to puff up his studio's prospects.

"You used to be able to find a good weekend. Today, you find the best weekend available."

So Bond and even the sequels to "Potter" and "Rings," two of history's five highest-grossing films, have opening-week competition, as other studios counterprogram to snag some corner of the moviegoing public.

DECEMBER DUELS

Thus, the latest Bond installment "Die Another Day" is calendared against urban sequel "Friday After Next"; "Potter" must disconnect actioners "Phone Booth" and "Half Past Dead"; and "Rings" has to tune out kid toon "The Wild Thornberries" while summarily firing "Two Weeks Notice," a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant.

"It's a great season for the filmgoers, in that they have a lot of choices, but it's hell for the marketers and distributors trying to get their projects out there," said Amorette Jones, Artisan Entertainment ( news - external web site)'s executive VP of marketing.

Thanksgiving weekend, long the province of Disney's annual holiday animated offering, the Mouse House faces competition to its "Treasure Planet" that can't even be called counterprogramming: another animated picture, Columbia's " Adam Sandler's 8 Crazy Nights."

And the latest Disney toon will have to compete for sci-fi fans with "Solaris," a remake starring George Clooney and helmed by Steven Soderbergh.

"Solaris" blinked against "Star Trek: Nemesis," moving from Dec. 13 to Nov. 28 last week, becoming what a Fox exec called the Thanksgiving weekend's "only adult movie."

Fox also moved "Drumline," a teen comedy starring Nick Cannon that had been set for Turkey weekend, out of the season altogether, to Jan. 10.

But "Star Trek" still hasn't scared off two comedies: Jackie Chan's "Shanghai Knights" sequel and Jennifer Lopez's "The Chambermaid" (it already ditched a Christmas Day debut). Paul Thomas Anderson's quirky romance "Punch-Drunk Love" moved out of the way to early October.

Only December's first weekend, long a Hollywood dead zone, remains lightly populated, though given last year's Dec. 7 opening success of "Ocean's Eleven," that taboo may soon disappear.

This Dec. 6, yet another big sequel, Billy Crystal's "Analyze That," tries to psych out prestige pic "Adaptation," with Spike Jonze directing Charlie Kaufman's script about scriptwriting; Nicolas Cage stars as Kaufman.

"The way the business works now, the best you can hope for is an open weekend, much less two in a row, for your movie," said Parkes.

The many offerings have stretched the holiday season as long as it can possibly go, bounded only by Halloween and its genre horror on one end and year-end Oscar deadlines on the other.

Just as with summer, the moviegoing season is beginning ever earlier.

"The two high seasons have definitely elongated," said Nielsen EDI president Tom Borys. "Where it's expected that the first weekend in May releases a summer blockbuster, it's now the same in the first weekend in November. It's just moved up everything about three weeks."

PRESTIGE PIC PLETHORA

This year's most remarkable aspect may be the year-end crush of smaller movies.

The Dec. 27 weekend overflows with prestige pictures in limited or platformed release, such as the all-star "Nicholas Nickleby"; "The Hours," with Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore; George Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"; and Jack Nicholson's "About Schmidt."

The only consolation is that no films are slated for Jan. 3.

"I think that unless you've got an urgent reason to go out then, it's best to stay out of the fray," said Bob Berney, who as an IFC Films executive chose to dodge the season-ending stampede.

A late opening does give a picture a chance to play through January if it catches on, because people are looking for indoor entertainment and don't have such holiday distractions as travel, shopping and parties.

January, says DreamWorks distribution executive Ed Thrall, has actually become a better movie-watching month than December because of that.

But this year especially, small films could very easily get lost in the big pictures' marketing battles. How to break through the clutter is a huge concern for execs with small films.

VEGGING OUT

That concern kept Artisan from venturing a wide holiday release this year, though "Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie" could have been a candidate for family audiences. Instead, the animated feature based on a successful video series opens Oct. 4.

"We chose early October to avoid the competitive environment," said CEO Amir Malin. "There's a quantity of films out there having to make some pretty hard decisions. But what happens as they get closer to these dates, the small-films guys realize they don't have the ability to compete."