STUDIO SPOTLIGHT Cruising at normal speed all year long, Paramount Pictures put their engines into overdrive and surpassed Warner Brothers in the final days of the year in order to take third place in the annual box office race. At the heart of this surge was the runaway success of Titanic (for which Fox has international rights) which powered the studio to the bronze medal. Otherwise, it has been a consistent year for the studio which has had hits in every season. Its number of wide releases stayed steady with 1996 at sixteen and did not include a single sequel. Paramount can claim seven number one films and nine weekends at the top spot for the year. Paramount sold $735M worth of tickets domestically in 1997 which was about even with the previous year.

The year started off with The Relic ($33.9M) which was the first new release of 1997 to open at number one, and was followed by the disappointing Beautician and the Beast ($11.5M). Howard Stern triumphantly arrived at number one in March with Private Parts ($41.2M) which was the first non-Star Wars movie to occupy the box office throne in six weeks. In fact, Return of the Jedi - Special Edition ($45.4M) was originally slated to bow day and date with Parts but Fox blinked and pushed it back one week, though never admitting that it was due to the Stern film. Paramount actually had a theatrical re-release of their own that spring - The Godfather 25th Anniversary Edition ($1.2M in 40 sites). Before the summer season arrived, the studio also had two solid mid-range action hits to their credit - The Saint ($61.3M) and Breakdown ($50.1M).


June brought Paramount's John Travolta/Nicolas Cage action blockbuster Face/Off which opened at number one with $23.4M and fought its way to $112.2M. The latter half of summer saw the surprising success of the low-budget kidpic Good Burger ($23.7M) and the meager performance of the not-so-low budget sci-fi movie Event Horizon ($26.6M). Luckily the fall brought two big hits in a couple of films expected to perform modestly. The Kevin Kline comedy In & Out ($63.9M) and the Morgan Freeman thriller Kiss The Girls ($60.5M) did solid business and were marketed and distributed perfectly by Paramount. Finally, the end of the year brought the latest John Grisham legal thriller The Rainmaker ($46M to date) which has performed well, but not greatly. And what better way to cap off the year than with Titanic. In what could be the bargain of the year, Paramount invested a reported $65M in the epic romance in return for domestic distribution rights. With a $28.6M launch, rave reviews, and fantastic word-of-mouth, the James Cameron picture could very well gross nearly $600M making it a very green winter for Paramount.

Other releases by Paramount in 1997 were Night Falls on Manhattan ($9.9M), Til There Was You ($3.5M), Kiss Me, Guido ($1.8M), A Smile Like Yours ($3.3M), Fairy Tale, ($13.6M) and Switchback ($6.5M).