The e-mail charged, among other allegations, that the two parties had agreed to a deal that would essentially allow the studio to cut salaries and freeze out the cartoonists’ own local, eliminating the animators’ collective muscle.

These threats didn’t exactly hearten the animation industry. Though ‘toons appear to be flooding the multiplex, the past few years in Hollywood have brought steady layoffs for animators; others were forced from full-time employment and found themselves competing on a job-by-job basis. Suddenly, animators who’d once enjoyed six-figure incomes were facing an uncertain future.

Now, just as audiences were applauding state-of-the-art effects in movies like “Dinosaur” — which climbed past $110 million last weekend — here was Disney plotting to ensure that its future CGI projects wouldn’t be an automatic gravy train for the animators who labor on them. The e-mail sent shockwaves through an already-besieged profession.

Practically speaking, though, the e-mail was in effect too late. Earlier this year, Disney and IATSE had already agreed to a new contract that would now cover approximately 100 to 150 animators working at the Secret Lab, Disney’s brand new CGI-animation unit (its first on-screen mention comes in the closing credits of “Dinosaur”).

On the surface, the notion of Disney agreeing to union protections for previously unrepresented workers would appear to be a good thing. But according to the e-mail, the IATSE had actually gone behind the back of its own Local 839 (the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists) and struck a deal that undercuts existing pay rates for CGI animators in the 839′s current contract. If this new agreement stands — and spreads, as IATSE hopes, to other CGI effects houses such as Sony Imageworks and Digital Domain — the e-mail apocalyptically warned: It “would basically hollow out the animators union from within and leave it an impotent husk.”

The e-mail left many in Hollywood scratching their heads. If the charges in the explosive message (which quickly turned up for all to read on a Web site called Animation Nation that bills itself as “the voice of the animation industry”) are correct, the IATSE had to answer a big question: Why would it accept a deal that cut its own cartoonists’ local off at the knees?

First, a brief look of the players involved and their respective interests:

The IA: IATSE is an acronym for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada. With more than 90,000 members, it embraces the various locals — from grips to makeup artists to set designers — that represent Hollywood craftsmen. What it does not cover are the burgeoning ranks of CGI workers, who have begun turning out everything from visual effects for movies to Shockwave animations for movie-related Web sites. At the IATSE’s ’98 convention in Montreal, president Tom Short placed organizing the industry’s CGI drones at the top of his to-do list. The CGI special-effects industry, he acknowledged, “presents a unique challenge to the IATSE and its organizing efforts” — especially since lots of CGI talent tends to be young, entrepreneurial and not particularly pro-union.

Disney: Eisner and Co. have jumped enthusiastically into the CGI business. In 1996, Disney acquired DreamQuest, an f/x house founded in 1979 that had already done work for such bombastic Disney movies as “The Rock.” Disney initially put DreamQuest in charge of its in-house f/x work, churning out threatening meteors and crashing airplanes for movies like “Armageddon” and ““Con Air.” It also began assigning actual character animation, like birthing a litter of cuddly CGI puppies for its upcoming sequel ““102 Dalmatians.” That meant Dreamquest had begun mining the same territory as Disney’s own Feature Animation Division, which has been experimenting with its own CGI elements, like the lavish ballroom set seen in 1991′s “Beauty and the Beast” and full-scale CGI character animation with “Dinosaurs.”

Last October, Disney decided to rearrange a little furniture: It retired DreamQuest’s name, combined CGI f/x designers and animators from both the Feature Animation Division and DreamQuest into a new unit, and dubbed it the Secret Lab. “It seemed logical to bring the two groups together,” Thomas Schumacher, president of feature animation, told Daily Variety at the time, “instead of having us compete for the same business.” Overnight, “Dinosaur,” which had been in the works for several years, was re-christened a Secret Lab project. This also meant that animators, working under the Cartoonists 839 contract, were now toiling under the same roof as non-union craftsmen.

Local 839.: From a high of about 3,000 members in 1996 (the peak of the animation boom), the cartoonists’ local now represents approximately 2,800 animators. Among the various job categories in its current industry contract — which is up for renewal in August — CGI animators are guaranteed a minimum of $30 an hour. While many animators earn more — a handful of superstar animators pull down more than $1 million a year — a ’99 wage survey conducted by the local documented a median average wage for CGI animators of $1,800 a week, or $45 an hour. Last June, when Disney first began talking of merging the non-union DreamQuest with its unionized Feature Animation Division, the IA’s Short, Disney’s Schumacher and reps from various locals like the Photographers Guild and the Editors Guild began a series of quiet talks, with 839 proposing using its existing CGI provisions as a template for the new agreement.

So, what exactly went down?

Getting an answer out of any of the participants turns up more brick walls than Wile E. Coyote ran into. Short was unavailable. Les Blanchard, the official IA point man for the new agreement, bluntly told me: “I don’t talk to reporters. Why don’t you talk to Disney?” Schumacher and other Disney executives weren’t any more eager to explain themselves. They all turned down repeated requests for comment.

Manwhile, Disney’s animators (fearful, presumably, for their own job security) were just as close-lipped — literally slamming down the phone when they realized a reporter was on the line. Animator Tom Sito, the 839 president who happens to be currently overseeing Warner’s “Osmosis Jones,” pled too busy — via e-mail — to discuss the issue. The local’s business rep, Steve Hulett, also refused to comment. Still, from conversations held elsewhere in the animation community — which has been watching developments with some anxiety — the story emerges.

Instead of offering 839′s contract to animators at the Secret Lab, the IATSE and Disney — over objections from 839 itself — brokered a new deal: the TSL agreement, which will allow the Lab’s animators to be represented directly by the IA instead of the local. When terms of the deal were first laid out last December, there were cries of protest from non-unionized TSL animators (who didn’t like its original pension provisions) and unionized 839 animators (who saw it as a dangerous precedent that could undermine their own pay rates).

To quell the protest, Disney backed down on a few issues: The original deal called for a 50-hour work week. That was revised to 40 hours per week, the standard in the 839 contract; minimums were revised upward. In its present form, the contract offers CGI animators a $28/hour minimum (versus 839′s $30/hour) — a difference of $80 per week for animators working for scale. It will have an even greater impact on trainees, who are offered a minimum $13/hour versus the $18/hour stipulated in the 839 contract.

“I don’t think the contract will have an effect on the veterans with experience — they already work for more than the minimum rates,” says one observer. “It’s the new people coming into the industry who are going to get screwed.”

The screwing may be about to begin.

Now that Disney has tossed together veterans from its Feature Animation Division with its former DreamQuest employees under its new TSL banner, even the veterans are nervous. Their fear is that when their individual contracts come up for renewal, they’ll be pressured to re-up under the lesser TSL contract. If that were to happen — a big if, since there is no evidence it has happened to date — it would start to thin the ranks of Local 839. As one angry poster on the Animation Nation bulletin board wrote: “Disney has been orchestrating this entire thing since the beginning. Now they’re working with IATSE to destroy 839. Guess they need more money to buy another trillion-dollar network.”

Nevertheless, despite calls on the board for affected animators to file a decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board — on the grounds that workers were not offered a vote on the new contract — a June 1 deadline has passed without any suggestion that anyone came forward to file a formal complaint.

So, for the moment, this is where the issue stands (barring any further revisions of the new TSL contract). “Disney could still back off,” one source who’s been following the saga predicts. “If they have huge morale problems, and the money issues look minuscule, they’re not stupid — they’ll weigh the issues and back off the TSL rates.” But Disney has every reason to be happy with the new arrangement, which allows it to save a few bucks by allowing for two-tiered pay scales at the Secret Lab. So does the IA, which can now use its Disney-bartered agreement to try to win contracts at Imageworks and Digital Domain — even if that means 839 be damned.

As for members of Cartoonists Local 839 — the situation may not be quite as dire as that alarmist e-mail first suggested. Still, a lot of members can’t help feeling like they’ve just had several of those big Acme anvils dropped on their heads.

By 1996, if there was any doubt about Demi’s power, she hogtied Hollywood by securing $12.5 million for “Striptease.” Never mind that the movie proved so inept that Castle Rock couldn’t decide whether to sell it as a drama or add a laugh track.

For a brief moment, Demi Moore ruled. She elbowed aside Julia Roberts and Jodie Foster as the highest-paid broad in tow — a dubious honor. “Demi was really hurt by ‘Striptease,’ says Rachel Abramowitz, author of “Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: Women’s Experience of Power in Hollywood.” “Everyone talked about that $12.5 million,” she says. “When the movie bombed, it wasn’t a quiet bomb.”

Now Moore is back. After a three-year absence, the 37-year-old actress just re-entered the fray.

It doesn’t appear to be going well.

“Passion of Mind” may once have been intended as a comeback vehicle, but, commercially, it’s more like a rent-a-wreck. Though the movie offers Moore a showy dual role — she plays Marty (a lonely Manhattan literary agent) and Marie (a widowed book reviewer with two daughters living in the South of France). The gimmick: When Marty falls asleep, she dreams of Marie’s life, and vice-versa. Neither character knows whose life is real. As directed by Alain Berliner in his English film debut — his last film was 1997s charming “Ma vie en rose” — “Passion of Mind” plays like a Lifetime movie goosed by a dash of “The Twilight Zone.” In a generally sympathetic notice, Variety reviewer Emmanuel Levy warned the film “has a strong built-in appeal for women but may experience harder times in going beyond the specialized arthouse circuits.” That guarded prediction has proven to be optimistic.

Paramount Classics — Paramount’s two-year-old wobbly in-house attempt to court the Miramax crowd — launched “Passion” two weeks ago in an exceedingly modest 104-theater limited release. The results: a middling $2,269 per-screen average. Last weekend, business fell 34 percent, bringing the cumulative gross to a measly $403,421 to date. By contrast, Paramount Classic’s own “The Virgin Suicides” — though hardly a box-office barnburner — opened to a $13,062 per-screen take from 18 locations in April and has earned $3 million to date.

Less, as they say, is Moore.

“Passion’s” failure to open isn’t entirely Moore’s fault. Her refusal to do any publicity in support of the movie hardly helped its cause, according to one producer. Hollywood didn’t exactly rush to make the movie in the first place. Written by David Field and the prolific script-churning-machine Ronald Bass — whos dished out such femme-friendly pap as “Stepmom,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Waiting to Exhale” — “Passion of Mind” was originally written for Michelle Pfeiffer as a potential Tri-Star project in 1985. Over the years, Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan and Winona Ryder have all been mentioned as possible stars.

“Passion” was announced with great fanfare when Paramount Classics (in a coproduction with Lakeshore Entertainment) first ballyhooed it in ’98; when the movie was completed last summer, the company postponed a fall release, and then sent it on a kamikaze mission over the Memorial Day weekend — in a doomed attempt at counter-programming — straight at the mega-machismo of “M:i-2″ and “Shanghai Noon.” Bad move.

But Moore’s three-year disappearing act didnt help matters either. (Her last starring role — a funny ensemble turn in Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry” excepted — was ’97′s “G.I. Jane,” in which she shaved her head and got butch with a bunch of Navy SEALS.) Hollywood may indulgently extend a free pass to its male stars when they take extended powders — Redford, Beatty, DeNiro and Pacino have all disappeared for years at a time — but the town has always been more interested in cultivating hot starlets than perpetuating divas.

During the time she’s been away, Moore’s once-record $12.5 million payday has been eclipsed by Roberts (who now charges $20 million), Foster and Ryan, who’ve hit the $15 million mark. Then there’s that ever-changing roster of pliable beauties — from Cameron Diaz to Catherine Zeta-Jones — waiting in the wings. In the Hollywood Reporter’s last accounting of Star Power, Moore slipped to 51st place.

“What’s the surprise?” says one producer. “She tried so damn hard that she lost her allure. That’s how I felt about Demi in those pole scenes in ‘Striptease.’ A lot of effort.”

Granted, Moore has had other things on her mind. In the wake of her ’98 separation from Bruce Willis, she retreated home to Hailey, Idaho, with her three daughters. But while Moore’s been tending to the kids, Willis has been all over the map, shifting from big-budget action/adventure (“Armageddon”) to indie character work (the negligible “Breakfast of Champions”) to psychological thriller (“The Sixth Sense”) to broad-based comedy (“The Whole Nine Yards.”)

Of course, whoever said Hollywood was fair? “Demi’s still a big star,” insists Abramowitz. “She just needs to choose the right vehicle. She’s also been good about bonding with other women in Hollywood, having girls’ nights out with some of the female executives. So I’m not convinced it’s over for her.”

In fact, Moore has developed a lucrative side business as a producer. Her involvement led HBO to air its successful 1997 abortion drama, “If These Walls Could Talk.” Thanks to the efforts of her then-production executive Suzanne Todd, a pal of Mike Myers, Moore shares a producer credit on both of the successful, shagadelic “Austin Powers” comedies.

A year ago, Moore’s production company Moving Pictures moved from Universal to Miramax, where it has a first-look deal. It may not be the busiest shop in town, but it does have one project in development: “Slugger,” a script by Steven Gary Banks and Bruce Graham, which concerns a kid who teams up with a ghostly version of the late Babe Ruth to hit one out of the park. Sound familiar?

If she’s to escape being sent back to the minors, Demi Moore needs to hit a home run herself.

But let’s get one thing straight, it’s no “Lion King.”

“The Lion King” has been haunting Hollywood ever since it first appeared in 1994. Seemingly irresistible, though I never got its cuddly charm, it roared to a whopping domestic gross of $313 million and a worldwide take of $772 million, easily becoming the most successful cartoon of all time and spinning off an animated TV series, direct-to-video sequels and a Broadway stage show that’s been packing ‘em in since 1997.

It’s also been the worst thing that ever happened to animation. Today, Hollywood animators can’t get “The Lion King” off their minds.

A little history: When Eisner and his lieutenant Jeffrey Katzenberg first took over Disney in 1984, animation was in the doldrums. Several years earlier, animator Don Bluth, convinced that the studio had lost its way, had fled with a team of draftsmen.

The remaining animators were left toiling on a dark, Tolkienesque fantasy called “The Black Cauldron.” When “Cauldron” was finally released in 1985, it coughed up just $21 million. But after a few stumbles (“The Great Mouse Detective,” “Oliver & Company”), the new team began to recognize the possibilities — both commercial and creative — of animation.

By 1989, the Disney animation renaissance had begun: “The Little Mermaid” (thanks to a boost from the composing team of Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman), officially heralded the toon’s return as a commercial force, grossing a tidy $84 million domestically. “Beauty and the Beast” (1991) upped the ante, becoming the only animated film ever nominated for best picture.

Hollywood, which almost always treated animation like a quaint sideline, suddenly started taking it seriously — not just as a business, but as a revived art form. Suddenly, top animators like Glen Keane (“Mermaid”) and Andreas Deja (“Beauty”) were stars.

Then “The Lion King” roared into town and changed everything. Since then, Hollywood has been trying — with mixed results — to revisit that high-water mark.

No studio is a bigger victim of this syndrome than Disney. Try as it might, its subsequent toons haven’t come close to “King.” Beginning with “Pocahontas” (1995) which earned $142 million in domestic grosses, they’ve all — to one degree or another — been dubbed disappointments. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which gamely tried to paint a happy face on the Victor Hugo tragedy, managed just $100 million in 1996. The jokey “Hercules” quipped its way to $99 million in 1997. “Mulan” rallied a bit, collecting $121 million in ’98. Last year’s “Tarzan” swung back up to a solid $171 million. These are hardly disastrous numbers, but they (along with their direct-to-video spinoffs) have also succeeded in flooding the market, watering down any remaining appetite for animation. Competitors, many of whom are trying to creatively break Disney’s cookie-cutter format — are finding it especially rough.

Over the next two months, six new animated movies are forcing their way into this already overcrowded marketplace.

Fox’s “Titan A.E.” comes out of the chute on June 16, promising a CGI-augmented Star Wars-esque space opera. The following week, DreamWorks debuts “Chicken Run,” a stop-motion-animated comedy from the Academy Award-certified Nick Parks, whose Aardman Animations is responsible for the winning “Wallace & Gromit” shorts. Then — pity the parents who have to sit through all this stuff — it’s on to Universal’s “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” (a combination of live-action and animation ` la “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”), Warner’s “Pokimon The Movie 2000″ (a sequel to the minimally animated ’98 hit that brought the trading-card cult onto the big screen) and Destination Films’ “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” (based on a creaky British TV series for kids). And, just to reassert its dominance, Disney will send “Fantasia 2000,” released on IMAX screens earlier this year, out into the neighborhood multiplex.

Once upon a time, when Disney parceled out its animated movies judiciously, and only an occasional competitor arose to challenge Mickey’s dominance, the rare release of an animated movie was a genuine event. “Animation has always had to compete with live-action, but when we went out with ‘An American Tale’ [in 1986], we weren’t up against a Disney movie and we were No. 1 for two weeks,” says “Titan A.E.” co-director Gary Goldman. “Whether six animated movies can all do business within the same two months, I don’t know.”

The evidence suggests they can’t. Last summer, despite critics’ raves, Brad Bird’s beguiling “The Iron Giant” went begging — Warner Brothers, busy with “Eyes Wide Shut,” botched its release and the $48 million movie returned just $23 million and change. Earlier this year, DreamWorks trotted out “The Road to El Dorado” to critical brickbats and it hit a roadblock at the $50 million mark.

Meanwhile, only one studio has managed to regularly crush Disney at its own game: Steve Jobs’ Pixar, which gave the world “Toy Story” ($191 million) and “Toy Story 2″ ($245 million). Ironically, Pixar, which has a five-picture distribution deal with Disney, consults with the Mouse House on story concepts and splits its profits 50-50. “There is no rivalry,” says Pixar executive V.P. and “Toy Story” director John Lasseter. “I just love to see good, animated films. Their goal is the same as our goal.”

Still, even former Disney executives admit the lure of another “The Lion King” has definitely oversaturated the market. Last summer, during his $250 million suit for overdue profits, Jeffrey Katzenberg charged that his former employer was throwing too much stuff onto the screen. If “The Little Mermaid” re-release had no legs, he suggested, it was just because it was undercut by Disney’s own “101 Dalmatians,” a live-action remake of one of the studio’s animated classics.

Nor does Disney simply release a new animated movie or two every year: It’s also been busy churning out live-action remakes — “102 Dalmatians” is on tap for this Thanksgiving — that take a nasty bite out of the family audience for other animated films. At the same time, it continues to recycle its old toons on the Disney Channel and ABC; then it re-releases them on video.

Aware, perhaps of the risks of such a saturated market, Disney appears to be reconsidering its marketing strategy. The ten movies in its so-called Platinum Collection, which includes classics like “Snow White,” used to come out every seven years (the time, presumably, that Disney assumed it would take for a hungry new generation to arrive). Beginning this year, these screen gems will be trotted out on video once every ten years.

There are other signs Disney has seen the error of its ways. For future animated efforts, the studio’s latest mantra is: “And it’s not a musical.” At least, that’s what animation head Thomas Schumacher kept repeating at a recent dog-and-pony show for exhibitors of Disney’s current works-in-progress.

Having reworked the same musical format once too often, the studio no longer has a song in its heart. This December, it’s scheduled “The Emperor’s New Groove,” the tale of a spoiled Inca prince who’s transformed into a llama. And next summer, the studio plans to take an entirely different tack with a wide-screen, turn-of-the-century adventure, “Atlantis,” that borrows from “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The songs may be gone, but, sadly, the music sounds the same.

Of course, that’s not how Hollywood sees things. Between the bookends of Memorial and Labor Day weekend, the industry rakes in 40 percent of its annual box-office gross. Luring moviegoers with the promises of shiny, upbeat entertainments is a matter of fiscal necessity. “This one is the best ever,” promised Walt Disney Motion Pictures chairman Richard Cook a few weeks ago at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater. Cook was hosting Disney Summer Heatwave 2000, an exhibitors-only sneak peak at the studio’s summer slate, complete with dancing chorus girls and boys. A few hours later, after a high-decibel screening of “Gone in 60 Seconds,” a smash-’em-up action movie about a bunch of car thieves starring Nic Cage and (all too briefly) Angelina Jolie, a few theater owners could be seen hurrying nervously onto Hollywood Boulevard, eager to assure themselves that their own vehicles hadn’t been molested.

For all the promise of large summer paydays, Hollywood has reason to be apprehensive this year. “Everything’s up for grabs,” admits one marketing executive. Last summer, the entire free world knew that “The Phantom Menace” would single-handedly create a record summer. Despite a critical drubbing, it managed to make $431 million.

This year’s entries won’t come close to duplicating that achievement. “M:i-2″ is the closest thing to a sure hit: In recent weeks, Tom Cruise has been flashing his teeth and regaling grateful interviewers with tales of death-defying stunts. The pump-primed “M:i-2″ grossed $12.5 million on Wednesday, its first day of release, putting it on track to pick up as much as $90 million over the coming weekend. On the other hand, if there is a sleeper bonanza like last summer’s $294 million “The Sixth Sense” slumbering among the class of 2000, it has yet to stand up and be counted.

Just shy of June, the carcasses of movies that died trying to jumpstart the season already litter the highway. John Travolta’s stupefying “Battlefield Earth” provided the most spectacular flameout. After two weekends of release, the sci-fi dud has barely scratched together $18 million. Nouveau-producer Elie Samaha (flatteringly profiled in a recent New York Times Magazine article) boasted that his movie would break even if it grossed $35 million, thanks to the presale of foreign rights. That rings flat now. “Earth” will be lucky if it manages to sell $25 million in tickets, which won’t even pay for its prints and advertising. (Goodbye sequel.) And it’s not even the biggest corpse in town: While “Earth” was noisily self-destructing, Kim Basinger’s “I Dreamed of Africa” quietly slipped into oblivion. In its first three weeks, the $35 million safari dropped off the charts with just $6 million in the bag.

No wonder Hollywood has the flop sweats. The real risk behind making summer movies is the cost of launching them in an overcrowded market. In 1999, the average cost for prints and advertising was $24.5 million per movie; for a summer flick that figure can easily spike to $50 million to $60 million. Disney’s production tab for “Dinosaur” amounted to anywhere from $130 million to $200 million (part of which will be charged to the expense of ramping up Mickey’s new CG-animation unit, the oddly-named Secret Lab). From “Gladiator” through “M:i-2″ to Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” and “The Perfect Storm,” dangerously huge budgets are commonplace. (The high-priced advertising real estate on NBC’s must-see season finales last Thursday was chock-a-block with pricey pitches for the upcoming summer fare.)

The game gets riskier: Many of the biggest summer movies are rushed from the editing room straight to the screen with little time for fine tuning. In order to satisfy press deadlines, “M:i-2″ and “The Perfect Storm” were shown earlier this month to junketeering media types before final touches like score and effects were even ready. Two summers ago, “Godzilla” director Roland Emmerich watched his completed movie for the first time — with an audience — at its Madison Square Garden premiere. “We would never do that again,” he told me. “It was unfortunate we locked ourselves into that schedule.”

With so much on the line, Hollywood opts for familiarity over novelty: the 2000 summer lineup is depressingly jammed with the usual suspects: sequels (“M-i:2,” “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps”), also-rans (“The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas”), pop-cult franchises (“X-Men,” “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle”), remakes (“Shaft,” “Bedazzled,” “Gone in 60 Seconds”) and quasi-remakes (“The Hollow Man,” director Paul Verhoeven’s “Invisible Man” riff and “Coyote Ugly,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s “Flashdance” reprise).

If they’re lucky, a couple of these movies will tap into the prevailing cultural backwater and become more than just the sum of their audience-tested parts. “Gladiator,” the season’s first $100-million-plus hit, seems to prove that old wine — in a spiffy CG-augmented bottle — sells. “Gladiator’s” success may also have something to do with the fact that it unwittingly conjures up Zeitgeist-friendly allusions to John McCain (ex-military leader shuns politicians) and the WWF. That bodes well for “The Patriot,” which features Mel Gibson as another battle-wizened veteran of the bloody French and Indian War. Tough guy Mel gets pushed too far, and there’s trouble.

Meanwhile, Hollywood appears to have abandoned mature female moviegoers this summer. Julia Roberts enjoyed back-to-back commercial home runs last summer with “Notting Hill” and “The Runaway Bride.” This year, the major studios don’t have a single full-fledged adult romantic comedy on tap. That’s strange, since women now head the top production jobs at four studios. Nor is Hollywood doing much to groom future female stars. Roberts remains the industry’s only consistently reliable romantic comedienne. Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and Cameron Diaz all pale in comparison. Which means when Roberts takes a powder, romantic comedies dry up.

Genuine adult drama doesn’t fare much better. Only “What Lies Beneath,” fatal-attraction ghost story starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, promises to come close.

Meanwhile as the contest shapes up, other movies are being yanked from the schedule altogether: After viewing a rough cut of Robert Redford’s metaphysical golf tale, “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” DreamWorks pushed its August 4 opening back to Nov. 3 (preferring to reposition it as a possible Academy Award contender). “We debated release dates,” admits Walter Parkes, DreamWorks Pictures co-head. “It just felt as if it would do better during the holidays than during the dog days of summer.” Miramax — whose release schedules are always in a state of highly unpredictable flux — decided to postpone till the fall both “Bounce,” its Ben Affleck/Gwyneth Paltrow flick, and “The Golden Bowl,” its latest Merchant/Ivory gloss on Henry James, which debuted to a ho-hum reaction at last week’s Cannes Film Festival.

Adding to the palpable behind-the-scenes anxiety is the fact that high-profile summer movies can make or break a studio regime. In 1993, when “The Last Action Hero” fizzled, it was only a matter of time before Columbia’s then-chairman Mark Canton was sent packing. Two summers ago, D.O.A. movies like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” marked the beginning of the end for Universal Pictures chairman Casey Silver. This year, Sony Pictures is the studio most in need of a hit. Chairman John Calley and his heir apparent, Columbia chairman Amy Pascal, have already released the year’s two biggest still-births: Gary Shandling’s “What Planet Are You From?,” which opened — or, more correctly, failed to open — to a miserable $3 million; and the aforementioned “Africa,” which did even worse, taking in just $2.4 million it first weekend.

Still, nobody said the summer movie business is a day at the beach. Actually, it’s more like a scene out of “Dinosaur.” A pack of lumbering behemoths desperately trudge across the desert searching for a box-office oasis. By mid-July, the body count grows, and the species appears headed for extinction. Then one or two survive, and the whole march begins again.

Call me when it’s fall.