FILM / Rushes

Summer approaches and Hollywood's annual hand- wringing commences as four big releases run out of control.

Stallone's latest, the cartoon- based Judge Dredd, is heading towards the dollars 100 million mark, a figure usually associated with a hit movie's gross, not its cost. Carolco's pirate picture, Cutthroat Island, inhabits the same stratosphere, as does Universal's Water World. However, the production to watch is James Cameron's True Lies, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first outing since the disastrous Last Action Hero. True Lies - 'this summer's movie to beat,' says 20th Century Fox - won't be meeting its 1 July release date, despite a shooting period that drained over dollars 100 million from the studio's coffers, with another dollars 25 million due to be spent on the advertising campaign.

Fox, hot from the runaway success of Mrs Doubtfire, are already saying that the fate of True Lies won't make or break the bank, blithely adding that the re-teaming of the director and star of Terminator 2 is bound to be a sure-fire combination. (Columbia said much the same last summer about reuniting Arnie with his Predator director, John McTiernan.)

Possibly Fox are sanguine about postponing their blockbuster until 15 July, because Cameron has obligingly kicked back part of his original fee and promised Fox future films, a deal cut when Cameron's foreign partners unexpectedly dropped out of financing the project. But other things are at stake for Schwarzenegger, his star power tarnished by the sheer scale of Hero's failure. Many are pointing out parallels with Hero: the high hopes, the ever- expanding shooting schedule, the rushed editing and the fact that no one outside a select circle has even seen footage of the spy thriller.

Smash or flop, True Lies will have to bring in at least dollars 300 million worldwide to show a profit. Fox are hoping to equal Terminator 2's dollars 500 million take. So is Arnie.

(Photograph omitted)