STUDIO SPOTLIGHT There is probably no studio happier to see 1997 fade away than Warner Brothers. A fixture among the top two studios in market share every year, Warners dropped to fourth with a slate of consistently disappointing films all year long. The studio ended the year with $680M in domestic ticket sales, down 25% from last year. Only three times all year did Warners top the weekend box office charts with a film from their stable. Their highest-grossing picture of the year turned out to be exactly the movie they expected it to be, but with not nearly as much money as was hoped for - Batman & Robin with just $107.3M. In fact only three films performed at or above expectations : July's Contact with $100.9M, October's Devil's Advocate with $61M, and March's Selena with $35.4M.

January saw Warners picking up a few scraps from December holdovers Mars Attacks! and My Fellow Americans followed by the Presidents Day weekend launch of Chevy Chase's Vegas Vacation ($36.4M). After Rosewood ($13.1M) tanked, a highnote was hit with the relatively inexpensive Jennifer Lopez biopic Selena which opened with a surprising $11.6M which took second place behind the mighty opening of Universal's Liar, Liar. Murder at 1600 ($25.8M) rounded out the pre-summer lineup. With the comedy dream team of Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, Fathers Day looked to be the comedy blockbuster of the summer but was practically ignored by moviegoers as they spent just $28.7M on it. Addicted to Love, with Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick, fared better with $34.7M.

Finally after endless hype, Warners unveiled the latest installment in their bread-and-butter franchise, Batman & Robin, which introduced George Clooney as the third Caped Crusader backed up by the superstar power of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Its opening weekend of $42.9M was not up to par with the last two Batpics and it eroded away quickly ending up with the lowest tally of any of the four films in the series. Luckily, the Jodie Foster sci-fi drama Contact was right around the corner and posted solid, but not boffo, numbers. Conspiracy Theory, which brought together two of Hollywood's biggest (and highest paid) stars Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, failed to live up to expectations but grossed a decent $76.1M. Other Warner entries during the summer collected pitiful box office grosses including Wild America ($7.3M), 187 ($5.7M), Steel ($1.7M), and Free Willy 3 ($3.5M).

The fall season started with the expendable Steven Seagal flop Fire Down Below ($16.2M). Warners couldn't spin critical praise into box office gold for L.A. Confidential which collected $39M, but later expanded after Oscar nominations were announced. With numerous best picture awards to its credit, Confidential now grossed over $50M and waits for the big trophy. The Al Pacino supernatural thriller Devil's Advocate was one of the few movies of the year to scare up consistent business as the film opened with $12.2M and showed legs ever since. Probably the most unexpectedly awful performance of the year for Warners was for Mad City ($10.3M) which never had a chance. Again, the studio gambled with the starpower of John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman and lost because the story was not interesting enough to attract a mass audience. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil ($25.1M) has done ok business considering its narrow release, but just as with Confidential, the sloppy marketing and distribution for this movie limited its potential earning power. The final release for Warners in 1997 was the flop The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, which collected just $5.3M on opening weekend.

For once, relying on its wide pool of stars could not bring in the massive sales that the studio is so accustomed to. Many big star vehicles crashed and burned this year amounting to huge losses on expensive films. Warner Bros. claimed 21 wide releases in 1997, up 3 from last year. but its top five films grossed only about $380M together compared to $599M for 1996's top five Warner titles. This year saw only four Warner movies cross the $50M level versus seven last year and eight in 1995. It is only natural for a consistent player to go into a slump at some point, but Warners cannot afford to stay in this slump much longer.