In one corner, there's a 74-foot-long Brachiosaurus.
In the other, a 75-foot-tall Schwarzenegger.
It's the Battle of the Bigfoots, and it's coming to a multiplex near you.
With Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, the DNA-clone dino-fantasy adapted
from Michael Crichton's bestseller, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero, a slam-bang fantasy about a teenager who steps into a movie starring a pumped-up juggernaut, the summer of '93 has a pair of blockbusters on its hands.
At least that's what everybody thinks.
"I'm certain that those two will be among the top movies, if not the top movies, for summer," says Dick Cook, president of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. "There will also probably be two or three others that no one is talking about, that'll end up in the top grouping - movies that come out of nowhere."
"Is there any way they can fail?" Martin Grove, film analyst for the Hollywood Reporter, says of Jurassic and Hero. "They can fail like any other film, if word-of-mouth is disappointing, because that will kill any movie. But I think it's unlikely. I expect both to deliver."
And they'll need to. Universal Pictures - which has been long on flops over the last few years - is pinning its hopes on mega-special-effects Jurassic, which cost an official $60 million to make and $20 million to $25 million more to print and market. That means that the June 11 release - which stars Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill and a herd of genetically engineered Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rexes that run amok in a theme park - needs to gross about $180 million to break even. Batman Returns, last summer's, and last year's, number-one hit, earned $163 million in domestic receipts.
As for Last Action Hero - which opens June 18 and teams Schwarzy (who in one incarnation looms over Times Square, more than 12 times his usual size) with pubescent newcomer Austin O'Brien - the $65 million adventure from director John McTiernan (Die Hard) has had disappointing test screenings and last-minute reshoots. But that's happened before, and the pics in question have gone on to earn quadrillions.
Columbia Pictures chairman Mark Canton, admittedly not a disinterested party, promises that the company's Hero will have "surprises and special effects that have never been seen before." As Canton told the Wall Street Journal, "between international and domestic (revenues), we're going to make plenty of money."
