Back in a Big Way

The anecdote says a lot about Hollywood's prevailing attitude toward sequels. Back when, with a few exceptions, sequels were the movie industry's most cynical throwaways -- a rummage sale of "Police Academy IIIs" and "Rocky Vs" that grew creatively paler and financially less successful with each inevitable iteration.

But it's no longer the same old story. This summer, more than ever, the creative and marketing logic behind the sequel has reversed. With the exception of the odd original picture -- "Finding Nemo" or a comic-book franchise like "The Hulk" -- sequels have become the movie industry's core product. They are bigger, more expensive, more heavily hyped and -- arguably -- sometimes superior to their progenitors.

Some wags derisively call this the summer of the colon picture, considering the number of sequels with that punctuation in their titles. There's "X2: X-Men United," "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd" and the just-released "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde." A third "Spy Kids" movie, titled "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," is set for later this summer.

Thanks to some copy editing by Paramount Pictures, the forthcoming "Lara Croft" sequel starring Angelina Jolie will narrowly avoid becoming Hollywood's first major double-colon sequel. The original was called "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," but Paramount is calling the follow-up "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life."

Also coming this summer are sequels to "Bad Boys," "American Pie 2" and the low-budget horror flick "Jeepers Creepers."

In all, a record 16 sequels will pass through theaters from early May through Labor Day, the traditional summer season in Hollywood, according to Exhibitor Relations Co., the movie-industry research firm. A total of 25, also a record, are being released this year, including two sequels to "The Matrix" and the third leg of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Hollywood loves sequels for all the old reasons -- the plots and characters are "pre-sold" to ticket buyers who liked them the first time around -- but for some new reasons as well. Mainly, thanks to increased marketing and production budgets, Hollywood is perfecting something new: making sequels bigger hits than the originals. So far this summer, "Matrix Reloaded, "2 Fast 2 Furious" And "X-Men" have all surpassed the box-office performance of their predecessor films.

"A sequel is a proven commodity," says Chris McGurk, vice chairman and chief operating officer of MGM. "The studio has a higher degree of confidence in a sequel because theoretically there's a built-in audience for it. Nothing is a sure bet in the movie business, but the odds are a sequel will find an audience better than a movie that's starting from scratch."

The typical sequel used to attract about two-thirds as many customers as the original movie, says Andrew Hindes, executive vice president of Nielsen EDI, which tracks box-office performance. Now, he says, the average sequel matches the original or exceeds it.

It's almost a given these days that the sequel will be more expensive than the film that came before it. Some of that is the increased cost of talent, the stars and directors and writers who presumably made the original successful can demand a fatter payday for the next installment.

Even a small movie -- no car chases, explosions or computer-generated effects -- can wind up costing more the second time around. MGM produced "Legally Blonde," released in July 2001, for about $18 million. Two years later, the studio had to ante up almost that much, about $15 million, just to get star Reese Witherspoon to sign on again. That helped drive the sequel's cost up to almost $50 million.

Apart from inflated salaries, some of Hollywood's budget-busting spending is simply a function of a self-perpetuating can-you-top-this mentality. "The Matrix," with all its whoa-dude special effects, cost $63 million to make in 1999. For the two concurrently filmed sequels, writers-directors-brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski spent $100 million on computer-generated imagery (CGI) alone. One chase scene in "Matrix Reloaded," the first sequel released in May, was shot on a custom-built section of freeway that cost $4.5 million, or roughly what it cost to make "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

"Matrix Reloaded," at $150 million, isn't even the most expensive sequel of the summer. "Terminator 3," crammed with its own CG effects, cost a reported $200 million.

The typical Hollywood film cost $59 million last year, up 23 percent over 2001, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The average cost of a film print has doubled in just the past 10 years.

With so much invested in a production, studios have but one choice: Spend even more to sell the film. It's not uncommon for the marketing budget of a movie to exceed the cost of making it. "Dumb and Dumberer," the flop sequel to 1994's hit "Dumb and Dumber," is one example. New Line spent $19 million to make the sequel and $20 million to market it. The movie -- which features two unknowns in place of the original stars, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, has barely earned a fifth of what its predecessor brought in ($127.1 million).

This summer, it's almost impossible to travel around Los Angeles without being bombarded with movie ads. There's Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" android glowering from a billboard. And there's Witherspoon's Barbie-doll-in-pink smiling from a bus placard.

Even so, Hollywood isn't irrational, at least not entirely. When it all works, the rewards for a successful sequel can far outweigh the risks. "Matrix Reloaded" has already cleared $600 million in domestic and international ticket sales, and it's still in theatrical release.

Yet to be counted is the money from other "ancillary markets," such as pay and basic cable, broadcast TV, DVD and video sales, and commissions from related merchandise sales.

In fact, a prime consideration in making sequels is that they're often better than the first film at attracting licensing deals, an important source of studio revenue. The key factors, says Bill Jemas, the president of Marvel Enterprises, are timing and predictability.

An original movie "is only in theaters two to three weeks," says Jemas, whose company's comic-book characters -- Spider-Man, Hulk, Daredevil, X-Men -- have recently become movie characters. "The studios green-light [the original] 12 or 16 months before it's released. That's just not enough time for a marketer to make up a merchandising plan. And you never know what you're dealing with. After a few 'Godzillas,' you're not likely to bet the farm on 'Shrek.' "

With the production uncertainties that can plague a first film, release dates often slip, playing havoc with those hoping to sell toys or T-shirts. However, "by the time you do the second movie," Jemas says, "you've got a decent idea what works, and you can plan for it. By and large, studios hit their deadlines on sequels."

Universal Pictures, for one, licensed very few products when it released "The Fast and the Furious" to an uncertain reception in 2001. For "2 Fast," the sequel, it licensed the movie's name to the promoter of a drag-racing series, as well as manufacturers of wheel rims, neon lights and car stereos.

Sony has licensed some 300 vendors to hawk products tied in with the sequel to "Spider-Man," up from 200 on the first film. The movie, which is filming on a tightly guarded set on the Sony/Columbia Pictures lot in Culver City, will be out next year.

Oddly enough, the notion that a sequel can be a blockbuster in its own right probably owes less to sturdy franchises like the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" films than to "Austin Powers."

The first "Powers" movie, released in 1997 by New Line Cinema, was a modest success, grossing just $53.9 million in its theatrical run. But its timing could not have been better. The movie came out on home video just as the DVD market began to take off, and just as Hollywood began to pour millions of dollars into ad campaigns to persuade people to buy videos and DVDs rather than renting them.

So millions of copies of the original "Powers" were still playing in VCRs and DVDs when New Line brought out the sequel, "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," in 1999. The studio (owned by AOL Time Warner) spent $40 million on an ad campaign. Promotional tie-ins with Virgin Atlantic Airways and other advertisers made Mike Myers's swaggering comic hero just about inescapable.

Result: "Spy" collected more in its opening weekend than its predecessor made during its entire run. It went on to generate almost four times the box-office revenue of the first movie.

" 'Austin Powers' was a watershed," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co. "It used to be that sequels never performed up to the level of the original. Now you had a sequel outperforming the original just on its opening weekend. It was definitely a sea change in the attitude of the studios."

Which leads back to the current glut of colon pictures.

There is, of course, the touchy little subject of whether a sequel can ever capture the joy and surprise of the original, whether it can ever be as artistically worthy as the first, which in many cases wasn't all that artistically worthy to begin with. With rare exceptions -- "Godfather II," perhaps the second "Lord of the Rings" -- sequels hardly ever qualify for any critic's annual Top 10 list.

So does Hollywood's reliance on the sequel "event" picture constitute some kind of creative bankruptcy? Would the moguls of an earlier era in Hollywood have greenlighted the production of, say, "To Kill Another Mockingbird"? Or perhaps "Citizen Kane II: Xanadu It Again!" With just a bit of defensiveness, MGM's McGurk answers: "There are still great movies being made. Look at 'The Pianist,' and 'Lord of the Rings' and 'About Schmidt.' " Sequels, he adds, "don't say a lot about creative drain. They do say a lot about the economics of making movies these days."

They're everywhere! They're everywhere! Among this summer's record number of sequels are, clockwise from above, "X2: X-Men United," "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," "The Matrix Reloaded," "2 Fast

2 Furious" and "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."Back for more: From left, Reese Witherspoon and Bob Newhart in "Legally Blonde 2"; Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle"; and Derek Richardson and Eric Christian Olsen in "Dumb and Dumberer."Mike Myers as Austin Powers. One observer says the success of the first sequel in the series spurred "a sea change" in studio attitudes.