HOLLYWOOD — Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos may run a movie studio, but these days they feel like traffic cops, making sure 20th Century Fox's releases don't crash into rival films at the multiplex.

To help them through the congestion, in their offices the movie chiefs pore over white boards cluttered with color-coded magnetic strips showing the films set for release through 2010. Like chess players, they shift films around to outmaneuver rivals.

With titles flooding the marketplace, studio bosses fear that the surplus is impeding an already rugged road to profitability. In 2007, studios and independent distributors released a record 517 films — an average of 10 a weekend, up 49 percent from a decade earlier — and this year movies are coming at the same pace.

"This is one of the biggest issues facing Hollywood today," said Rothman, adding that it's just as crucial to pick the right release dates as it is to select the right script and hire the right stars and filmmakers. "When you're trying to cram too many movies into a finite number of release dates, it's inevitable some will suffer."

Although the industry periodically has grappled with an oversupply of movies, executives say the current abundance is troubling because it comes as attendance and DVD sales have stagnated.

Adding to their costs, movie companies spend huge sums to globally promote and release their films — as much as $150 million for some pictures.

"In order to break through the clutter, we all feel the pressure to spend more in marketing," said Warner Bros. President Alan Horn.

The logjam has been fueled by billions of dollars of film financing that has poured into Hollywood over the last few years from private equity, hedge funds and other investors, arming studios with cash and creating a new crop of independent distributors.

In the last three years, companies like Overture Films (backed by John Malone's Liberty Media Corp.) and Summit Entertainment (bankrolled by Merrill Lynch & Co.) have entered the fray, along with Weinstein Co. and the revived Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

As a result, movies that might never have gotten the green light are adding to the congestion, many critically acclaimed films are getting lost in the shuffle, and releases targeting the same audience are cannibalizing one another.

Even with the shuttering of Time Warner Inc.'s specialty labels Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse and the folding of its New Line Cinema into Warner Bros., the newcomers are ramping up their annual slates. Overture and Summit each plan to release a dozen films a year.

Many top executives whine about the "excess of product," but few have done much about it. Only one studio, Walt Disney Co., has scaled back its release slate, to 13 last year from 19 in 2006. A decade earlier, the Burbank studio released 25.

Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger confronted the issue at a recent investor conference in New York: "Too many movies are being released into the marketplace. They can't all be good enough or marketed well enough to drive good returns."

Paramount executives expect to put out fewer movies because of the recent decision to scale back the Paramount Vantage art house label and because of the expected departure of its DreamWorks live-action unit, though those titles could go out through a rival distributor in a net wash.

Rarely is there a weekend when multiple movies aren't vying for screens and the same audience, especially during such peak moviegoing seasons as summer, fall and winter holidays.

This summer, Disney's "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" got upstaged by two behemoths, "Iron Man" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

"There were these giant vacuum cleaners on either side of us, and it took significant amounts of business away for our movie," said Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook.

Specialty distributors feel the pinch, too. Not only are they spending more than ever on marketing — a 44 percent jump in 2007 to an average of $26 million per picture — but in many cases, their releases are getting booted off screens before being able to build word of mouth.

Fox Searchlight had high hopes for "Young @ Heart," a feel-good documentary about a chorus of rock-singing senior citizens, when it was released two months ago to gushing reviews. But when it didn't catch on, it got kicked out of Hollywood's Arclight Cinemas after three weeks. (In Honolulu, "Young @ Heart" opened May 23 and is still showing at the Kahala Theatre.)

"Normally, we can hold them six to eight weeks," said Steve Gilula, who heads distribution at Fox Searchlight. "It's a jungle out there. If your gross isn't high enough, you're gone."

Two of the summer's biggest star-driven comedies, Paramount Pictures' "The Love Guru," with Mike Myers, and Warner Bros.' "Get Smart," with Steve Carell, open head-to-head today, much to the chagrin of the studios' respective movie chiefs.

For months, Hollywood executives had figured that either Paramount or Warner would blink, shifting to another date.

"I'm not happy about it, and Alan's not happy about it," said Paramount Chairman Brad Grey, referring to Horn. "But there was no place to go," given that every weekend of the summer had multiple movies or a potential blockbuster on the schedule.

Horn concurred, saying, "There are more movies than I'd like to see."