Aieee! It's Summer!!

By RICHARD CORLISS

The racking sobs rise in a plangent chorus outside the nation's multiplexes, as young girls cry, "How can we survive a summer without Leo?" In the past the season has survived pretty well without Leonardo DiCaprio. But in the wake of Titanic, studios wish they could clone the blond bambino as easily and guiltlessly as they steal story ideas. What works at the movies? What else? What worked before!

So, opening just before Memorial Day, exactly a year after The Lost World: Jurassic Park, is another really big lizard movie, Godzilla. This updating of the old Japanese monster series, by the Independence Day team, has been teased so cannily ("Size Does Matter") that now industry folk have only one debate: Which film will come in second? Analyst Alan Kassan of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell picks Saving Private Ryan. "A great script, Steven Spielberg directing, Tom Hanks starring--I'd take points in that."

Studios plan their summer slates a year in advance: one humongous action film leavened with some kid-targeted comedies and an adult thriller or two. Then, of course, everything goes wrong. "The most interesting thing this summer," says Harry Knowles Jr., the dweebmaster of the movie-gossip website Ain't It Cool News, "is that we don't have Warner's Superman film or Disney's Mighty Joe Young or Universal's Hulk coming out, as they were originally slated to. We've had three big dropouts."

So studios sensibly scale down. Troubled Universal's modest non-Hulk slate now includes the biotech scare show Virus, the George Clooney caper Out of Sight and Terry Gilliam's dopester saga Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with Johnny Depp--not just an anti-summer summer movie but an anti-Hollywood Hollywood movie.

You still have to sell the film. Godzilla went with size, plastering hints about its star's dimensions on 8,000 outdoor displays. Others try niche marketing. In ads on Ally McBeal, Armageddon peddles itself as a love story, with kissy spots featuring Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. The idea is to attract Hollywood's hot new demographic, young females--the segment PaineWebber analyst Christopher Dixon calls "the new bobby-soxers."

And finally you go for as much ancillary business as seems apt. There will be hundreds of Godzilla spin-offs. But for Private Ryan, DreamWorks canceled a G.I. Joe action figure modeled on Hanks. Maybe the muscles were too big.

Below is our tout sheet, based on watching trailers, listening to sages and making stuff up. Fact is, no one knows what works. Barry Sonnenfeld, director of last year's gigantic Men in Black, says he's in the dark. He is sure of only one thing: the blockbuster of summer '99 will be an update of '60s TV's The Wild, Wild West. Starring Will Smith. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

BOY TOYS!!!

GODZILLA (May 20). Japan's revenge on New York City for getting suckered into buying too much mid-'80s Manhattan real estate. The Chrysler building, MetLife, Madison Square Garden: no icon is safe from the big green guy. And he breeds! (Sequels, we bet.) In its '97 bow, Jurassic 2 took in $93 million. Godzilla could be the first $100 million weekend movie.

ARMAGEDDON (July 1). The last two big films to open on the July 4th weekend, Independence Day and Men in Black, earned a combined $1.375 billion worldwide. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's macho movies (The Rock, Con Air) do testosterrific at the wickets. So this Dirty Dozen in outer space will get a rousing send-off. If there's a question, it's about instant deja vu. Armageddon will be the second film this year to star Bruce Willis, to deal with an astral collision--and to destroy the Chrysler building.

LETHAL WEAPON 4 (July 10). Six years is a long time between sequels, but this is a hardy franchise. Mel Gibson goes crazy; Danny Glover fumes. What's new? Well, Chris Rock is along to goose the youth market; Hong Kong's Jet Li kicks some Occidental butt and helps sell the film to Asia. Moral: good business is more important than than great moviemaking.

SMALL SOLDIERS (July 10). After MouseHunt, DreamWorks keeps acting out its Disney animus with this warped take on Toy Story. Nuclear-powered action figures (think of an Arnold doll with Chucky's soul) march amuck. More artillery than LW4, but less bang for the buck?

MASK OF ZORRO (July 17). This twentysomethingth version of the Latino avenger fable looks sumptuous and serious. Yet one wonders about Antonio Banderas, a sexy, able actor whose films almost no one pays to see. Is he the Spanish Jeff Bridges?

SNAKE EYES (Aug. 7). Since his Oscar turn in Leaving Las Vegas, all Nicolas Cage has done is star in three action films that each topped the $100 million mark and, for a romantic change of pace, made audiences believe in angels. So don't discount this Brian De Palma crime thriller.

BLADE (Aug. 28). Wesley Snipes--buff body and best menacing display of teeth since the early Kirk Douglas--saves the world from some hyperactive vampires. Action in the gaudy John Woo mode; can it find viewers beyond teenage boys?

GIRL POWER!!!

MULAN (June 19). A girl becomes a woman warrior in this chow-mein cartoon: Chinese savor meets American-do. Now that industry analysts no longer expect every Disney animated feature to do $300 million domestic, they can appreciate the suave storytelling and cross-generational lure of a nice little epic like this. And accountants at the Mouse House can expect black ink, not Mulan rouge.

QUEST FOR CAMELOT (May 15). The Disney formula may have become predictable, but is it imitable? Warner Bros., with its first all-animated feature, hopes so. The film's troubled production history and its wan trailer suggest otherwise. The power-pop score and name-brand singers may make the CD a hit, leaving Camelot as its own ancillary marketing device.

MADELINE (July 10). Little Madeline (Hatty Jones) schemes to save her school in an adaptation of four Ludwig Bemelmans books. A few years ago, summer was bloated with children's movies. Now the kid sisters of the girls who saw Titanic 47 times have only this and...

EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY (Aug. 7). The film's pedigree promises a fractured fairy tale: the last time its star (Drew Barrymore) and director (Andy Tennant) teamed, it was for ABC's trash package The Amy Fisher Story. So let's see...Cinderella lives on Long Island; Prince Charming runs a garage; the glass slipper comes from Wal-Mart; and the wedding is on the front page of the New York Post.

HOPE FLOATS (May 29). Any actress' b.o. wattage is an on-off thing. Julia Roberts survived a dry spell, and--hello, anyone else out there?--Sandra Bullock returns to full-time twinkling in this romance, an antidote to last summer's torpedoed Speed 2. Let's hope this vessel floats.

DANCE WITH ME (July 31). Or: Shall We Dirty Dance in the Strictly Ballroom? Finally a film caresses Vanessa Williams as the star she should be. When she and her sexy partner (Chayanne) step out to Lectro Luv's Dream Drums, the body work jolts the viewer like a megadose of Viagra.

ALMOST HEROES (May 29). Film comedy used to be Cary Grant swapping highballs and epigrams with Irene Dunne. Now it's often un hommage au Three Stooges, starring Saturday Night Live alums. In this road farce the late Chris Farley pairs with Friends' Matthew Perry. You can watch him explode one last time.

IDIOTS' DELIGHT!!!

DIRTY WORK (June 5). SNL deportee Norm Macdonald trades in his Weekend Update chair for the role of an evil prankster in the revenge-for-hire business. Do let us know how it turns out.

DEAD MAN ON CAMPUS (July 24). "There will be some weird summer sleeper," says analyst Dixon, "and this could be it." Sleep as in The Big, since this is a black comedy about college kids plotting to drive a roommate to suicide so they'll get an A for grief. With perennial star-of-the-future Tom Everett Scott. Directed by Alan Cohn, who helped create MTV's The Real World, so we'll hope against hope.

JANE AUSTEN'S MAFIA! (July 24). This synoptic Mafia spoof, sort of a Godfellas, is from Jim Abrahams of the Naked Gun series. The trailer, which has 17 big laughs (out of a possible 22), tells us to "See it early. Avoid the Mob." We'll be there.

WRONGFULLY ACCUSED (Aug. 7). Geezers can be goofs too. Leslie Nielsen reunites with Pat Proft (who also worked on Naked Gun), for a parody of 63 recent crime thrillers. Fine, but aren't those films their own insidious parodies? And didn't Fatal Instinct send up the genre back in 1993?

STAR RE-TURNS!!!

THE TRUMAN SHOW (June 5). Truman Burbank is the only man on earth who doesn't know he's the star of a popular 24-hour soap opera. As Truman, Jim Carrey inhabits director Peter Weir's bogus universe with a heroic gentility. But will Carrey's rowdy fans skip Truman? Or will the audience that might appreciate an adult parable stay home because, hey, it's just a Jim Carrey movie? One industry savant says not to worry: this canny film will reach both groups and gross $200 million.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (July 24). Tom Hanks, Hollywood's most improbably reliable box-office lure, hasn't starred in a film since 1995, so it's nice that his friend Steven Spielberg gave him this chance for a comeback, in a World War II G.I. drama with Matt Damon. The potential gross here is the same as for an old Hanks film. Big.

BULWORTH (May 15). When a star reaches that delicate age when he must be photographed through six layers of gel, he looks for youth by co-starring with it. As a bigoted Senator, Warren Beatty, 61, falls for Halle Berry, 29. Bless them both, but if Travolta couldn't sell political satire, odds are Beatty can't either.

SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS (June 12). Here's Harrison Ford, 55, in an ornery romance with Anne Heche, 28. But stuff blows up, and Ford has the chance to solidify his claim as heir to Clint's manly scowl.

THE HORSE WHISPERER (May 15). In his first film as star and director, Robert Redford, 60, talks to the animals and delicately woos Kristin Scott Thomas, a matronly 37. Will the teen-girl audience in search of movie romance cotton to a man who's old enough to be Leonardo's grandfather? Not DiCaprio's--da Vinci's. (Bygones!)

DOCTOR DOLITTLE (June 26). When he talks to the animals, they talk back, in the voices of Chris Rock, Albert Brooks, Garry Shandling and Paul Reubens. The Nutty Professor proved that audiences still love Eddie Murphy--when he's funny and sweet. This comedy, and Murphy's work as the Mulan dragon, could have viewers shouting, "Eddie! Eddie!"

WEIRD TV!!!

BASEKETBALL (July 31). The South Park kids--not Cartman and Kenny but creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone--star in a sports farce from David (Naked Gun again!) Zucker. It might score, but the grownup in us says the Parker-Stone celebrity clock is at 12 minutes and ticking.

THE AVENGERS (Aug. 14). Can a hit spy caper be spun out of a '60s TV series that few saw and fewer remember? Maybe not, but savor the swank cast: Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and evil Sean Connery--finally the anti-Bond.

THE X FILES (June 19). TV's hit psy-fi drama dares to powerize the paranoia up to big-screen voltage. "The show is too big to call a cult now," observes actor-comedian Harry Shearer. "You could put the name X Files on a pack of cigarettes and people would buy it." (Hmm: "Cancer Man says, 'Smoke these and you too can head a vast government conspiracy.'") Our bet: with the top-rated series among young people as its base, the film will find $100 million worth of viewers ready to inhale.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles