"Normally, we can hold them six to eight weeks," said Steve Gilula, who heads distribution at Fox Searchlight. "It's a jungle out there. If your gross isn't high enough, you're gone."
Two of the summer's biggest star-driven comedies, Paramount Pictures' "The Love Guru," with Mike Myers, and Warner Bros.' "Get Smart," with Steve Carell, will open head-to-head June 20, much to the chagrin of the studios' respective movie chiefs.
For months, Hollywood executives had figured that either Paramount or Warner would blink, shifting to another date.
"I'm not happy about it, and Alan's not happy about it," said Paramount Chairman Brad Grey, referring to Warner's Horn. "But there was no place to go," given that every weekend of the summer had multiple movies or a potential blockbuster on the schedule.
Horn concurred, saying, "There are more movies than I'd like to see."
With both movies staying put, they appear destined to split the comedy audience on their first weekends: Consumer tracking surveys show similar levels of interest in the two PG-13-rated comedies.
Later in the summer, half a dozen comedies will vie for attention between Aug. 6 and Aug. 22, including producer Judd Apatow's stoner romp "The Pineapple Express" and the female-skewing "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2."
Universal Pictures yanked its comedy "Wild Child," starring Emma Roberts and Natasha Richardson, from its Aug. 15 release date so as not to bump up against the action farce "Tropic Thunder," starring Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller, and three other new films.
"It certainly is crowded, and we want to be more measured and prudent in making the right date selection," said Universal Pictures Chairman Marc Shmuger. The studio has yet to pick a new date.
Last fall, there was a pileup of serious dramas on the weekend of Oct. 19, when 16 new releases jockeyed for position.
"We all kind of got swallowed up in the crowded market," said producer Alan Ladd Jr., whose acclaimed crime film "Gone Baby Gone" didn't get as hurt as some of the other adult dramas including "Rendition," starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, and "Things We Lost in the Fire," with Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro.
The crowded market has forced studios to stake out key release dates for their big event movies far in advance to try to scare off heavyweight competition.
Warner already announced the release date for its seventh "Harry Potter" movie -- Thanksgiving weekend 2010 -- even before the sixth film hits theaters this November.
Picking the right release strategy is treacherous in an era when movies have a quick burn rate. Films typically generate nearly a third of their domestic ticket sales in the first three days of release.
Fox's Rothman and Gianopulos spent a long lunch earlier this year debating when to open "What Happens in Vegas," starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz. They chose May 9, thinking their romantic comedy largely aimed at couples in their 20s stood apart from Warner's younger-skewing "Speed Racer." The move paid off, with a $20-million debut and a global gross so far of $170 million.
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claudia.eller@latimes.com
josh.friedman@latimes.com
