HOLLYWOOD ATTACK of the KILLER TOT MEALS

What does it say about the state of Hollywood when Ronald McDonald secures a spot on Premiere magazine’s annual compilation of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood, a notch above former list topper Michael Ovitz?

Or, when the Walt Disney Co. recruits a former Burger King executive to head its film marketing?

Or, when one of the VIPs visiting the set of the upcoming Disney film “George of the Jungle” during a location shoot in San Francisco is a McDonald’s executive there to make sure that a Big Mac will be, uh, “presented” properly during the five seconds or so it will appear in the film.

In a word (or, in this case, an acronym), it’s all about QSR.

QSR is Hollywood’s acronym of the moment. It stands for Quick Service Restaurants. In an earlier era, they were called fast-food joints. These days, QSR might as well stand for Quantities of Spendable Resources, which is what the fast-food industry is willing to throw at Hollywood by the millions when it finds a movie that it believes can lure even more people through the doors to add to the billions and billions already served.

It may seem odd that moguls who religiously eat lunch at 1 p.m., order swordfish or salmon and wash it down with San Pellegrino are queuing up to do business with fast-food companies as if they were a noontime crowd in Tulsa lining up for 55-cent Big Macs.

But these days the Golden Arches really are golden to Hollywood studios already spending like drunken sailors to sell their movies. Who wants to say no to someone willing to pitch in another $25 million or more to persuade a family in suburban Chicago to buy tickets to your movie on its opening weekend, and follow it up with a visit to one of its burger restaurants?

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Fast-food promotions aren’t exactly new, but the wrinkle now is the seismic shift in the competitive landscape over the last year caused by the decision by Disney and McDonald’s to join at the hip for a decade. It locked the doors of the world’s No. 1 fast-food chain to any other studio. No Batman, Superman, Spielberg & Co. or any other non-Disney franchise. Just “Hercules,” “George of the Jungle,” “Flubber,” “101 Dalmatians” and the like. Everyone else please head down the street to a Burger King or Taco Bell.

It’s as if Disney took away a sleeper sofa in the middle of a game of musical chairs. Now, studios have to scramble to find a seat, working 18 months or more in advance to secure a spot at the fast-food table. Sitting pretty is the industry’s No. 2, Burger King, as the main alternative of choice.

“Burger King is clearly the belle of the ball,” says Steve Ross, senior vice president of worldwide promotions for 20th Century Fox, which will promote its upcoming animated feature “Anastasia” with Burger King. “They have the pick of pretty much any property.”

The exclusive McDonald’s-Disney arrangement reportedly was done largely at McDonald’s behest after Burger King cleaned up with such Disney promotions as “The Lion King.” It has led to growing speculation by Disney rivals that McDonald’s franchisees will eventually grow restless with the company passing up such top promotions as “Batman” and Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” sequel “The Lost World” because of its betrothal to Disney.

“Ten years is longer than most marriages last,” says one rival.

Adds Richard Taylor, Burger King Corp.’s director of worldwide promotions: “We liken McDonald’s position to saying, ‘What kind of ice cream do you like? Vanilla? OK, you get vanilla for the rest of your life.’ We have a choice of flavors.”

But McDonald’s defends the deal as far more than the narrow movie-by-movie relationship some are viewing it as being.

“I have no doubt this will be a great relationship, unparalleled for our two industries,” says Dean Barrett, McDonald’s vice president of marketing. “A lot of people can’t get used to the fact that two big global brands with this kind of credibility can forge this kind of working relationship. With Disney, it’s not just about their next movie. It’s about their theme parks, their next movie, their characters, their videos and the whole way they do business. It’s bigger than a hamburger. It’s about the integration of our two brands, long term.”

With the competition so intense for fast-food promotions, which when successful can boost the restaurants’ business 10% or more, still another concern is emerging. Is Hollywood, as it usually does with anything successful, overdoing it with the fast-food promotions, threatening to kill the golden goose (or arches, in this case)? And, is Hollywood being overly seduced by the lure of fast-food promotions, viewing them not only as ways to enhance a successful movie campaign but to also bail out a bad film? If that was possible, “Last Action Hero” might have been a hit.

“A fast-food promotion will never save a movie that isn’t good,” says Richard Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group. “It’s part of the campaign that includes all different aspects of marketing. If the movie lends itself to a partner, then it gives it that much more.”

Last fall, Disney went so far as to hire John Cywinski, former vice president of U.S. marketing for Burger King, as its top film marketing executive.

Another source of concern is that burger chains are increasingly flexing their all-beef muscle, calling shots on films made, from content to the release date. It’s something they believe is a bum rap.

“There has been a lot of talk that QSRs are running Hollywood, and that you can’t make a movie without a QSR,” Burger King’s Taylor says. “But that’s just not true from Burger King’s standpoint. We’re not going to tell a studio what to put in a movie or tell them when to release it. If it works out with our calendar, fine.”

Still, sometimes the windows of opportunity in those calendars are pretty tight. Last year, the mid-May release date of Universal Pictures’ “Flipper” was dictated in part because Taco Bell, which was willing to promote the film, only had a small promotional window. Executives at the Bubble Factory, which produced the film, now believe in hindsight that it would have done more business had they spurned the promotion and released the film during the first days of summer vacation, when younger children could have seen it.

When a fast-food chain does get interested in making a big push, the entire dynamics of a movie can change. The budget for Disney’s upcoming summer film “George of the Jungle” virtually doubled overnight, to more than $50 million, when McDonald’s jumped on board. Producer Jordan Kerner says the additional money being spent by the studio will go toward such enhancements as computer-generated special effects to make an elephant in the film behave like a frisky puppy.

To show their gratitude to McDonald’s, he says, the filmmakers included a scene in which the character George sits atop a San Francisco cable car eating a Big Mac. To make sure it was displayed properly, McDonald’s sent a representative to the set to supervise the munch.

Any influence fast-food companies actually do have is considered a minor trade-off by most in Hollywood, which isn’t about to turn down the marketing support a fast-food tie-in offers given the soaring cost of selling films.

According to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the cost to sell the typical movie has soared to nearly $20 million as big spenders like Disney continually raise the ante. Even then, people may still ignore the film. If they do, it’s a quick trip to the video store, since nearly every movie these days lives or dies based on the opening weekend’s box-office receipts.

Fast-food movie promotions typically last as long as a month, beginning just before the movie opens. What’s more, they can often act like a secondary booster rocket to the initial marketing campaign, kicking in with additional thrust a week or two after the movie opens, just as the studio marketing dollars are burning out.

More important, fast-food promotions have taken on a stamp-of-approval function. With so many movies being released, studios are desperate to do what it takes to elevate their films to “event status.” Studio executives know that nervous theater owners, toy licensees and others with a big stake in the film’s performance take comfort when they know a McDonald’s, Burger King or Taco Bell believes enough in a film to back it with millions in promotional advertising. The flip side, however, is that movies without promotions might be unfairly viewed as flawed.

“It becomes a problem if the public starts to perceive that if you don’t have a fast-food promotion, the movie isn’t an event,” says Brad Globe, who heads DreamWorks SKG’s licensing and merchandising and who long handled the same chores for director Steven Spielberg’s projects.

Despite the big sums of money thrown at projects by fast-food companies, studios sometimes balk at the opportunity. Director Barry Levinson and star Robin Williams reportedly nixed any efforts to secure a fast-food deal for 20th Century Fox’s “Toys” because it might diminish the serious message of the 1992 film. Burger chains are no doubt grateful for that call, given that the movie was a bomb.

Likewise, executives at DreamWorks are still debating internally whether to push for a fast-food tie-in to the studio’s first animated feature, “The Prince of Egypt,” based on the story of Moses. Somehow a Bible Burger doesn’t exactly seem appropriate.

Nor is every movie considered appropriate for a burger tie-in.

Representatives of chains say they generally prefer movies with the broadest family appeal--ones typically rated PG or G and that aren’t very intense for younger audiences. That’s why there was no Twister Burger or Two-Topping, Extra-Thick Crust Independence Day pizzas last year.

McDonald’s was scorched by criticism when it tied a promotion of its Happy Meals for kids to the violent, PG-13-rated “Batman Returns.” Mindful of that, Burger King this summer will aim its promotion of Universal Pictures’ “The Lost World” at teens and adults, while simultaneously promoting the animated “The Land Before Time” dinosaur adventures for its children’s meal.

“We have the cute, cuddly dinosaurs for the children and the big scary dinosaurs for the adults,” Burger King’s Taylor says.

Not every fast-food chain is enamored with Hollywood. A spokeswoman for Domino’s Pizza says that the chain has no desire to do movie promotions. Likewise, the Wendy’s chain, third in size behind McDonald’s and Burger King, also tends to shun them.

Wendy’s Vice President Denny Lynch says the chain has been involved in some movie promotions, such as the 1989 animated film “All Dogs Go To Heaven,” but finds they can be a headache. For one thing, it takes a lot of manpower to adequately stock stores with the right movie-related merchandise or games, and even then customers can become angry when stores run out. In addition, he added, movie promotions can take the focus off why people should be visiting the restaurant in the first place.

“We think we are in the food business; therefore food should be the focal point of our advertising, publicity and promotion,” Lynch says. “Food is the hero at Wendy’s, and that is the philosophy first and foremost.”