HOLLYWOOD - It's looking like 2004 is the "year of the sequel," if there ever was one.The highly anticipated sequels to Spider-man, Shrek and Harry Potter, slated for summer, lead the pack of this year's sequel releases.
Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban will hit screens during the summer blockbuster season.
Then there are more...plenty more: Barbershop 2: Back in Business and its spin-off, Beauty Shop, starring Queen Latifah; Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; Meet the Fockers, a sequel to Meet the Parents, starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro; Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed; and Blade: Trinity, the second sequel in Wesley Snipes' Blade franchise.
The Ring 2 will see Naomi Watts freak out at the TV once again; Frankie Muniz don spy wear again in Cody Banks 2: Destination London; Anne Hathaway reprise her royal role in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement; and John Travolta attempt to Be Cool in the Get Shorty sequel.
Though shot at the same time and more of a continuation than a sequel, Quentin Tarantino's shoot-'em-up Kill Bill Vol. 2, will debut amongst the wave of sequels this year.
Remakes are also popular this year, with rehashings of the Frank Sinatra Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson play cops and robbers in the big-screen adaptation of '70s cop show Starsky & Hutch, and strangely perfect Nicole Kidman stars as a too-obedient wife of the sleepy town of Stepford in The Stepford Wives.
There is no superhero unemployment line this year, what with the number of comic book heroes, vixens, and villains coming to a theater near you--again. After the overwhelming success of Spider-Man, everyone seems to be getting on the superhero or supervillian bandwagon.
Comic-book based Constantine stars Keanu Reeves; Halle Berry slithers into some leather and stilettos for her role as Cat Woman; a heavily made up Ron Perlman stars as the leader of a group of unusual looking crime fighters in Hellboy; and Thomas Jane, despite his decidedly un-superherolike name, stars in The Punisher.