Cross-Promotions Heat Up For Summer

Cross-promotions involving television, video stores and the big screen get bigger every summer, as fantasy faves turn up in all three markets during hot-weather months.

This weekend, for instance, you can catch the new “Batman Forever” in theaters, while the American Movie Classics channel shows episodes from the 15-part 1948 serial “The Adventures of Batman and Robin” every Saturday morning through August.

Val Kilmer is the new big-screen Batman, and Chris O’Donnell is his Robin. In the 1948 version, the roles were played by Robert Lowery and John Duncan.

At the same time, Warner Home Video is introducing episodes from the animated television series “The Adventures of Batman & Robin” as a collection of 46-minute video tapes. Each $10 cassette includes two episodes that concentrate on one character: “Robin,” “The Riddler” (played by Jim Carrey in the new movie), “Two-Face” (Tommy Lee Jones on the big screen) and “The Joker” (Jack Nicholson played him in the first installment in the current “Batman” series).

Many stores also stock cassettes of “Batman” (1966), a featurelength spinoff of the live-action 1960s TV show starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin; Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992), both starring Michael Keaton; and “Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm” (1993), an animated spinoff of the television series Warner is releasing to tape this month.

A three-hour telecast of Burton’s first “Batman” is also scheduled June 20 on CBS-TV.

With the new big-screen version of “Casper” cleaning up at the box office, it’s also not hard to find tapes of the original 1950s/1960s cartoon series that spawned the movie.

MCA Home Video has released a collection of original Casper cartoons. Each 24-minute tape is priced at $10. The titles include “Casper’s Brave Acts,” “Casper’s Fairy Tales” and “Casper’s Halloween.”

Counting on renewed interest in Clint Eastwood, thanks to the success of “The Bridges of Madison County,” MCA has also released a bargain-priced collection of Eastwood classics, including $15 tapes of “The Beguiled,” “High Plains Drifter” and “Play Misty For Me.”

Later this month, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” will be released to theaters. Saban Home Entertainment has released several 30-minute tapes, selling for $13 apiece, drawn from the television series, including “Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire” and “Rocky Just Wants to Have Fun.” Each tape includes a music video.

In August, a feature-length movie based on Ann Martin’s popular stories, “The Babysitters Club,” will open in the malls. The series still turns up on television, and there is a continuing market for $15 cassettes drawn from the show, including “Kristy and the Great Campaign” and “Claudia and the Missing Jewels.”

Anticipating a big-screen “Godzilla” remake while celebrating the big guy’s 40th anniversary, Paramount Home Video is releasing “Godzilla’s Greatest Hits,” a collection of eight dubbed-in-English, Japaneseproduced monster movies, five of them, including “Godzilla vs. Mothra” and “Godzilla’s Revenge,” actually starring Godzilla. The others: “Rodan,” “War of the Gargantuas” and “Last Days of Planet Earth.” They’re priced at $15 apiece.

Last year’s big-screen remake of “Little Rascals” is now a top-selling videotape, and it will soon appear on cable.