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Analysis: Hollywood scores big with 'Grinch'

By PAT NASON, UPI Hollywood Reporter

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 28 -- Leaving aside the complaints of a few sour-puss movie critics, "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is a winner across the board for Jim Carrey, director Ron Howard, Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures.

"The Grinch" is a rebound, following two less than stellar box-office performances for Carrey. It's shaping up as the biggest hit ever for Howard and his production company, Imagine. And it's going to be a gold mine for Universal.

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The picture is generating so much business, it's even getting credit for helping the bottom line at Universal's rival studios. With "The Grinch" leading the way, American moviegoers spent close to a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend -- putting this year's grosses ahead of the numbers for the comparable period of 1999 for the first time since box-office business flattened out this summer.

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The movie version of Dr. Seuss's classic Christmas book took in $52.4 million over the Friday-to-Sunday period, dropping just 5 percent of its sensational opening weekend gross. Over the entire five-day period, audiences spent close to $74 million on the movie, bringing its 10-day gross to more than $137 million.

No one in Hollywood ever feels safe predicting which movies will be hits and which will flop, but the expectations for "The Grinch" were high, ever since Universal first announced that Howard would direct Carrey in the project. Howard is a highly respected director and Carrey was everyone's first choice to play the role.

But executives at Universal are as surprised as anyone else at how well the movie has done. The buzz before the picture opened was lukewarm-to-very good. The buzz now is that everyone in Hollywood underestimated the movie. "The Grinch" is poised to become the biggest box-office hit of 2000 and could land among the top 20 of all time.

"Mission: Impossible 2" is the leader for the year so far with $215.4 million. "Gladiator" grossed $186.6 million, and "The Perfect Storm" took in $182.5.

The marketing campaign for "The Grinch" -- featuring tie-ins with Toys R Us, Visa and other corporate partners -- is largely designed to drive up repeat business, an essential ingredient for a blockbuster. In fact, analysts say "The Grinch" is already benefiting from repeat business. It's also reaching across to all demographic segments, including not only the very young and their parents but also Carrey's core audience of teens and young adults.

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Carrey is within striking distance of his previous best box office performance, "Batman Forever," which grossed $184 million in 1995. Universal distribution president Nikki Rocco is already sure "The Grinch" will be one of the top grossing films ever.

"I don't know exactly what kind of legs it will have," she told Daily Variety, "but there's no doubt this film's going to be around for the rest of the holiday period into the new year."

Rocco also projected that "The Grinch" will sell well on videocassette and DVD, and become a perennial holiday profit maker for Universal. "The Grinch" is the first non-Disney movie to win the long Thanksgiving weekend box-office since 1993, when Robin Williams starred in director Chris Columbus' 1993 blockbuster, "Mrs. Doubtfire." Columbus has the inside track to come out on top at the box office next Thanksgiving, when his current project, a movie version of the first Harry Potter novel, opens.

While "The Grinch" is getting credit for leading the box-office charge over the holiday weekend, the other top performers deserve their fair share of the credit as well. Disney's "Unbreakable," writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to his 1999 hit, "The Sixth Sense," grossed $47.2 million over the five-day period -- the second-best Thanksgiving opening ever, following last year's $80.1 million five-day gross for "Toy Story 2."

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Another Disney release, "102 Dalmatians," grossed $26.8 million over the five-day period. The 1996 live-action feature "101 Dalmatians" opened stronger, with $41.5 million, but the sequel no doubt lost customers to "The Grinch" and "The Rugrats in Paris," which took in $22.8 million over the five-day weekend, and has grossed close to $50 million in 10 days. The top 10 pictures set a record, grossing $166 million over the three-day weekend, and the total year-to-date estimated gross through Sunday -- $6.59 billion -- was slightly ahead of the figure for the same period last year.

The fantastic performance of "The Grinch," combined with the solid returns for "Unbreakable," "102 Dalmatians" and "The Rugrats in Paris," show that -- despite the hand-wringing in Washington, D.C., over the movie industry's emphasis on sex and violence -- Hollywood can still crank out entertainment for the whole family.

"The Grinch," in particular, shows that one movie can appeal to children, adolescents, young adults and grownups. Jim Carrey,Ron Howard and Universal Studios found the right combination, and now they are being rewarded with the kinds of box-office riches that everyone in Hollywood dreams about, but only a lucky few ever manage to realize.

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