Sleepers ‘Mary,’ ‘Zorro’ Cut a Swath at Box Office

In a summer bombarded by such slickly packaged, mega-hyped goods as “Armageddon” and “Godzilla,” two new movies have swept into the marketplace with much less fanfare and are relying--shockingly--on good old-fashioned word-of-mouth to draw audiences.

Neither film boasts big superstars or deafening special effects.

And neither cost anywhere near what the other high-profile films out there did, which means the potential profits for each are that much greater.

If they can continue to weather the competition from the big “event” movies, Sony Pictures’ swashbuckling romantic adventure “The Mask of Zorro”--the top-grossing film of the weekend with $22.5 million--and 20th Century Fox’s raunchy comedy “There’s Something About Mary” could well wind up being the sleeper hits of summer.

At a moderate cost of $23 million, “Something About Mary” in particular could be one of the most profitable films of the year. Since opening Wednesday, the Cameron Diaz-Ben Stiller comedy has grossed a total of $17.7 million, of which $13.7 million came in over the weekend.

While its opening numbers seem unspectacular compared with those of “Lethal Weapon 4’s” $34-million debut two weeks ago, industry observers believe that, despite having no big stars or big explosions, “Mary” will generate some serious bucks over time.

If both films continue to perform as well as expected, “Zorro” and “Mary” would represent a throwback to a time in the movie business when films stood a chance of being discovered by audiences rather than being shoved down their throats. Today, with multiple movies opening every weekend of the year, the market has become so frenzied that films often are gone before audiences have a chance to find them.

“This is the best part of our business,” said Tom Sherak, Fox’s domestic film group chairman, “when it’s not about hype but about an audience finding a picture because it’s so good.”

Jeff Blake, Sony’s distribution chief, points out: “The difference between the old movie business and now is you do have to get on the board.

“A film can’t open sixth or seventh and be discovered,” Blake said. He believes the challenge for films like “Zorro” and “Mary” is having to “fight their way into the market and come up with the numbers right away.”

Costing $73 million--less than half that of some of the other big summer films--”Zorro” was released without the kind of fanfare and media attention that accompanied “Godzilla,” Sony’s overhyped early summer offering. While that movie grossed $136 million in the United States and is expected to far exceed that overseas, there’s no question that it fell dramatically short of Sony’s hopes for a project that monopolized its resources for the better part of a year.

“Zorro” was ready for release as long ago as late last year, but Sony decided to hold it off until July in hopes of getting its share of summer play time, according to Blake. Its opening, which Sony executives expected to be in the high teens at best, “exceeded our fondest hopes,” Blake said.

The strong opening was due in part to the film’s terrific reviews. Unlike this summer’s crop of other popcorn movies that were panned by critics, “Zorro,” directed by Martin Campbell (“GoldenEye”) and starring Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins, was the first to receive good notices pretty much across the board.

Based on its opening, Blake said Sony is counting on the film’s playability to all audiences to achieve grosses of more than $100 million in the U.S. alone.

“In July, the only film to ever open to $20 million or better and not go on past $100 million was ‘Waterworld,’ ” noted Blake, referring to Universal’s expensive 1995 debacle, which grossed $88 million domestically but cost more than twice that.

“Zorro” will begin to roll out overseas in late August, and Sony expects the film’s foreign take to exceed the domestic.

Also the beneficiary of terrific reviews, “Something About Mary” “has great economic potential,” says Fox production chief Tom Rothman.

“Mary” a raunchy romp directed by the Farrelly brothers of “Dumb and Dumber” fame, has the added obstacle of being R-rated, unlike the PG-13 “Zorro” which plays to a much broader audience.

Fox’s Sherak said, “We thought it would play [to] 18-to-24-[year-olds], and it played a lot older than we thought.”

Fox had a very limited window in which to generate some pre-release interest in its movie, since it was completed less than two weeks before its release. The studio was originally planning to open the picture later in the summer. Then executives screened it for test audiences about 2 1/2 months ago and realized it might have a big hit on its hands.

“It was one of those rare times, like with ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Big,’ that all of a sudden it comes out at you,” said Sherak.

Because Fox didn’t get a print of the movie until July 5, Sherak said, “We’re still playing catch-up with ourselves. . . . This film should have been widely screened throughout June.”

While “Mary” began generating a hugely positive buzz in Hollywood, market research showed that early awareness among moviegoers was hardly as strong. Consequently, Fox decided to sneak-preview the movie on the Wednesday and Sunday nights before its nationwide release last week.

“We needed for it to create its own energy,” said Sherak, noting that by opening the film on a Wednesday (rather than a Friday, which is more common), essentially, “It was like having four sneaks going into the weekend.”

Whereas all other movies fell off a modest 20% to 30% from Saturday to Sunday, “Mary’s” business dropped a mere 8%, according to Sherak. And, he confidently predicts, “By next weekend, we’ll really be smiling.”