The Year of The 3quel

By RICHARD CORLISS

In very ancient Greece, Homer had a surprise hit. The Iliad was boffo, thanks to a strong revenge story mixing love, war and some fabulous poetic effects. So of course he thought of a sequel, spinning off one of the characters, Ulysses, into his own traveling adventure. Homer called that one The Odyssey, and it was an even bigger smash. Then, deciding he had exhausted the saga, he stopped.

That's the difference between Homer and Hollywood, where two is never enough--not if the original movie and its first sequel happened to be blockbusters. Intoxicated by the grosses of such threepeats as the final episodes of The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, both of which improved on the take of their immediate predecessors, the studios look prayerfully to this May. It's a perfect storm of threequels--three of them, natch--as some of the most lucrative series ever find out whether third time's the charm.

Coming to every theater near you on May 4: Spider-Man 3. (The first two films about the Marvel Comics kid with the gooey arms took in $1.6 billion worldwide.) Then on May 18, Shrek the Third. (Total gross of the first two chapters: $1.4 billion.) And a week later, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. (The first two earned more than $1.7 billion.) That's close to $5 billion for the six movies, not including the really easy money in DVD revenue. How big the bucks for Take 3 in each of the gigan-chises?

"The standards are sky high for this trio," says industry analyst Gitesh Pandya, editor of Boxofficeguru.com "At a minimum, each needs to break $300 million in North America to be considered a success, and they all have the potential to get close to $400 million. These films tend to do 60% of their biz overseas, so with worldwide b.o., DVD sales and TV rights, each film should earn at least $1 billion."

That--rather than the itch of some gifted writer or director to make an original statement--is the reason these movies get made. Audiences don't demand art here, just terrific entertainment. The first Shrek served that up in style; so did the first Pirates. But the second and third time around, the studio's need for a sure thing is matched by the moviegoer's desire for a familiar one. For all the skills on display, sequels are made primarily to satisfy the consumer's addiction for the same old, some new. Isn't that called TV?

In its pre-TV glory days, Hollywood made a few series--Andy Hardy, The Thin Man, the Bob Hope-- Bing Crosby Road comedies, and horror films with the whole Frankenstein family. But these were middling fare. The big-ticket items were singular sensations. Nobody made a sequel to Gone With the Wind, Casablanca or Ben-Hur. The industry didn't think in roman numerals until The Godfather, Part II in 1974. But with the triumph of special-effects fantasies like Star Wars, sequels became a smart way to print money. Now they are needed to turn bad years into good ones. The difference between the box-office slump of 2005 and the rebound last year can be attributed to one film: Pirates 2. That's why the trifecta of threequels is crucial to Hollywood's health.

Look at the numbers. Of the top 10 worldwide box-office champs as tabulated by Boxofficemojo.com all except the No. 1 Titanic are franchise movies, and seven of those nine are sequels--episodes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek. (That's in actual figures. In inflation-adjusted dollars, 1939's Gone With the Wind is still the all-time winner, and no sequels make the top 10.) Dead Man's Chest, last year's second installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, was only the third film in history, after Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, to earn more than $1 billion in theaters.

More threequels are in store after Spidey, Shrek and Captain Jack have fleeced you. On June 8, Ocean's Thirteen, with George Clooney heading an all-star cast in the heist series that so far has cadged $814 million. And on Aug. 10, Rush Hour 3, the Jackie Chan-- Chris Tucker action-comedy whose predecessors have grossed $592 million.

If it works three times, keep on cloning. That's why Friday the 13th begat nine sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street had six, the two franchise villains faced off in Freddy vs. Jason, and James Bond has saved the world in 23 hits since 1962. Meanwhile, the Harry Potter series is headed for a Proustian seven. The first four film adaptations of J.K. Rowling's epic rank fourth, ninth, 10th and 17th on the all-time box-office list. The fifth, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will be calling all wizards on July 13.

The Potter series was launched with high hopes. But some films are out-of-nowhere hits. Says Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer: "You take a movie based on a theme-park ride about pirates, and you had not very high expectations. After we had such an unexpected hit with the first Pirates movie, there was pressure to do something bigger and better, which we somehow did." Prudently, Bruckheimer shot the second and third Pirates films simultaneously, reducing the overall budget. Yet each sequel cost in the $200 million neighborhood, 50% more than the price of the original.

That's one of the many challenges for threequels: everybody's fee goes up, again. "We always want to get paid more," Bruckheimer says. "That's understandable." And no one's salary rockets higher than the stars'. "They are the face of their franchises," Pandya says. "Whatever compensation Johnny Depp gets, he's a bargain for Disney." The leads also lend emotional continuity to the new episodes. "I really don't think you can change the actors," says Brett Ratner, director of the Rush Hour films. "Without Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, Rush Hour 3 would not exist. There's no Jet Li-- Chris Rock version."

The lucky producers are the ones who make animated films like Shrek. Mike Myers gets paid handsomely for a few days' work as the green ogre's voice, but the creature himself doesn't demand profit participation. Thus Shrek the Third could cost less than $100 million. In sequel land, that's practically a Sundance-movie number.

Cost management aside, threequel makers need to serve up the familiar product but in a larger size. "The third one is about giving more,"says Ratner, who has also directed third films in the X-Men and Hannibal Lecter series. "More action if it's an action film, more laughs if it's a comedy, and all without compromising or changing the characters."

The more ambitious sequels want their characters to grow. Avi Arad, producer of Spider-Man 3, explains the arc: "The first Spider-Man was about the reluctant hero learning about his power. No. 2 was the kid learning to handle this awesome responsibility among other aspects of life, like love. No. 3 is, Does it go to his head? Once you master your ability and everybody applauds you, do you believe your own publicity?"

The industry hopes--prays--that audiences believe all the hype for these threequels. Movie people know that for every Spider-Man, there's a thudding Hulk; for every Shrek, a wildly off-orbit Treasure Planet. They also fret that with so many seen-it-before films clogging the May-June release schedule, sequel fatigue may set in. Pandya suggests this could hurt the June 15 opening of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, a follow-up to the 2005 film Fantastic Four.

What may really hurt these sequels, however, is that they are simply machines, designed to replicate themselves forever. None are organic, like The Lord of the Rings and the first two Godfather films, in which a complex story unfolded in lavish detail and made audiences gasp in fear and wonder.

But there's a reason it's called show business. Look, if the moguls had been Greeks, they would have given The Odyssey another title: Iliad II--better brand recognition. And they would surely have pressured Homer to come up with a threequel. Maybe Ulysses could go up against Hercules in a real battle of the titans. Why, it could outgross Freddy vs. Jason.

With reporting by Rebecca Winters Keegan/Los Angeles