(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's summertime, and the viewing is easy. Since movie theaters sell 40% of the year's tickets between Memorial Day and Labor Day, studios crank out reels of new releases and spend plenty promoting them. Beverly Hills Cop II looks like the summer sizzler. Though comedian Eddie Murphy more or less treads the same territory as in the first version, which most critics thought was funnier, II sold $40.6 million at the box office in its first six days in North America, one of the best debuts ever. Paramount, a Gulf & Western unit, spent $25 million making it. Mara Balsbaugh, an entertainment industry analyst at Smith Barney, says that the movie was largely responsible for a ten-point run-up in the company's stock price in late May. On the other hand, Coca-Cola's stock has shown little impact from the bomb Ishtar, bankrolled by Coke's Columbia Pictures subsidiary. That's because the company's entertainment operations constitute only about 15% of earnings -- and film production is only part of that. Ishtar, a $40-million attempt to recapture the magic of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road to classics (this time with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty), needs to gross from $60 million to $70 million in North America to cover costs allocated to that market. It has taken in only $9 million so far. Profits, if they ever materialize, will have to come from an extremely good performance in overseas box office, videocassette sales, pay and pay-per-view TV, as well as network and local TV deals. Together, they produce 65% of a film's revenues these days, according to Art Murphy, film industry analyst for Variety. Among the coming attractions that may get good reviews on Wall Street: The | Untouchables, a revival of the old Eliot Ness TV show, which Balsbaugh says cost Paramount $22 million; The Witches of Eastwick with Susan Sarandon, Cher, and Jack Nicholson playing the devil, from Warner Communications' Warner Bros.; The Living Daylights, a James Bond film from MGM/UA's United Artists; and Dragnet from MCA's Universal, starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks in a wacky reincarnation of another old TV show.