Cinematic Covers Ii

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May 1, 2003 by Teresa Palagano

Byline: Teresa Palagano

For better or worse, summer blockbuster season will be here faster than you can lie "I'm-a-good-personal-pal-of-Steven-Spielberg." To pack 'em in at every bijou and multiplex in America, Hollywood will unleash the closest thing it has to a sure thing - sequels. Expect at least 23 summer films with "Part II" in the title.

Action-soaked cinema - complete with computer-generated effects, stunt sequences, and surreal fight choreography - will again be the rage. Clearly, audiences crave this kind of midyear fare. And so do many editors, who are all too aware that marrying the right action hero to the right summer weekend can yield just the right result - a huge newsstand draw. We're talking boffo biz, at both the theater and the racks.

The 2003 blockbuster season begins with The Matrix Reloaded, opening on May 15. In this second film of the trilogy (The Matrix Revolutions comes out in November), the matrix aims to quash the rebellion by releasing a computer virus in the form of silver men with power equal to Neo's (just go with us here, will ya?), played by the film's star, Keanu Reeves. The buzz on this one is big, and a couple of the weeklies have already cashed in. Entertainment Weekly gave Reeves the cover last June, and Newsweek showcased the Matrix star last December. Both covers had spectacular performances, according to Cover Analyzer, an information network owned by Source Interlink Companies. Sales for EW's cover increased by 107 percent versus the average sales for the prior 52-week period. And Newsweek's sales went up by 37 percent.

Everybody's favorite heavenly detectives are back as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle screeches into theaters on June 27. This time around, the Angels go undercover to retrieve missing wedding rings that contain encrypted identities from the federal witness protection program. And Cameron Diaz, the ditsy but deadly private eye, sure can carry a cover. When she appeared on Esquire's April '02 issue, sales increased by 37.5 percent, according to data from Cover Analyzer. She had the same effect on Harper's Bazaar's January '02 issue - sales soared by 17.3 percent. Her only disappointment came with Vanity Fair's January '03 issue, when sales were off by 21.6 percent versus the 52-week average.

Moviegoers seeking a little Independence Day weekend merriment may find it on July 2 with Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Elle Woods goes to Washington to take on the political establishment in this sequel to the 2001 hit comedy. And while Chihuahua lovers will cheer for this flick, editors might be wise to second-guess its star, Reese Witherspoon. Only two of her last five covers did better than average: In Style ( 11.9 percent) and Us Weekly ( 9.5 percent) got a boost from the blonde, but Seventeen (-28 percent), Vanity Fair (-2.6 percent), and People (-7.6 percent) didn't fare as well.

The Boys are back in town on July 18 with Bad Boys 2, a sequel to the 1995 action-comedy sidesplitter. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reunite as Miami police detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett to investigate the flow of designer drug Ecstasy into Miami. While Smith can open big (think Men in Black and Independence Day), he's also dropped a few bombs (think Wild, Wild West). In other words, he's risky at the theater, and the same holds true at newsstands. EW put him on the cover in January '02 and again in July. Both covers under-performed - by 2.3 percent and 55.7 percent, respectively.

With Lara Croft - Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, the media world gets an actor who can sell movie tickets and magazines. Angelina Jolie is back as the time explorer who, in her latest adventure, discovers the mythical Pandora's Box in an underwater temple. Off-screen, Jolie's wild ways tend to be just as alluring (okay, confusing), and newsstand buyers can't get enough. Sales of Us Weekly soared by 127 percent when it featured the celeb on its cover in June '02, and sales increased by a whopping 150 percent with an exclusive Jolie interview one month later. Sales for Premiere's April '02 Jolie issue went up by 17.7 percent, and Vogue's April ish, featuring the actress, was up by 59 percent. Only on the cover of Marie Claire, with a 4 percent decline, did Jolie fail to deliver the goods, proving that even cyberbabes have their bad months.