COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU ... AGAIN! FRANCHISE FEATURES OFTEN MEAN BIG BUCKS, SO THEY KEEP ON COMING.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

The movie franchise - sequels, prequels and spinoffs - is not only the white-hot trend of the summer but is also factoring into forming the film slates of some of Hollywood's major studios for several years to come.

Warner Bros. wasted no time in announcing plans for a 2004 sequel to ``Scooby-Doo'' after the movie grossed a stunning $54.1 million at the box office during its opening weekend in June. Ditto for Sony's Columbia Pictures, quickly formulating plans for a third ``Men in Black'' film after the sequel had a $87.2 million opening over the five-day Independence Day holiday.

``Studios would rather see a good idea get stale than try to come up with another surprise hit out of nowhere,'' observed Adam Farasati, an analyst with the box office analysis firm Reel Source. ``No matter what year it is in Hollywood, sequels will always be the key to opening a summer film.''

In all, 17 movie sequels or franchise installments have already hit theaters or are a scheduled for release in 2002, including the bows next weekend of ``Stuart Little 2'' and ``Halloween: Resurrection.'' They will be followed in quick succession by ``Austin Powers in Goldmember'' and ``Spy Kids 2'' before summer's end. Due out during the fall holiday season: new installments of the ``Lord of the Rings,'' Harry Potter, James Bond and ``Star Trek'' series.

``It's an insurance policy but it's not a guarantee,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a box office tracking firm. ``What a sequel has is built-in awareness.''

On tap for 2003 is yet another installment of ``Rings'' in addition to ``Terminator 3,'' ``The Fast And The Furious 2'' and two sequels to ``The Matrix'' that will be released within months of each other.

These are the perfect, low-risk projects for the major studios, almost all of which are now owned by large conglomerates like AOL Time Warner, Viacom and Vivendi, resulting in increased pressure to produce a profitable film slate. The familiarity of a franchise also helps alleviate some of the marketing pressure placed on a studio because they are presenting something of a known commodity to the public.

``Ideally, every studio would have a year like Sony is having where you are coming up with fresh, lucrative films like 'Spider-Man' and anchoring with franchise films like 'Men In Black II' and 'Stuart Little 2,''' Farasati said. ``That way, you have room to flex your creative muscle but are also covering your bottom line as well.''

Warner Bros. struck gold last fall with ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' which became the highest-grossing film of 2001. Future installments of ``Potter'' are assured for several years to come since they are based on a best-selling series of books. The studio had been seeking the same kind of reliable and profitable franchises like the ``Batman'' and ``Lethal Weapon'' series from the 1980s and '90s.

Dergarabedian said the industry is seeing a proliferation of films that immediately lend themselves well to becoming franchises.

``Take a movie like 'Scooby-Doo,'' these are not close-ended stories, you can take these characters and put them in new situations,'' he said.

While historically, a sequel and third or fourth installments of a movie franchise have seen diminishing box office returns, in the past few years, the trend has been turned on its head with monster grosses for the sequels of films like ``Austin Powers,'' ``The Mummy'' and ``American Pie.''

`` 'The Spy Who Shagged Me' made more its opening weekend than the first 'Austin Powers' film made in its entire run,'' Dergarabedian said. ``It used to be rule of thumb that a sequel would make two-thirds if they were lucky.''

Some sequels bomb big

The public has shown that it's not enough to just have a familiar title with a number next to it, as was demonstrated by the indifference to such films as ``Karate Kid III,'' ``Free Willy 3,'' ``Robocop 3'' and ``Home Alone 3.''

``The thing with trilogies is that the third one almost always makes the least amount of money,'' Farasati said. ``All start with a fresh idea that becomes an absolute blockbuster, but by the third movie, the idea becomes stale.''

In fact, there have been so many poorly received sequels that there are now scores of Web sites on the Internet completely devoted to them. E! Online's ``Repeat Offenders'' site lists ``Rocky V,'' ``Caddyshack II,'' ``Jaws: The Revenge,'' and ``Speed 2: Cruise Control,'' as among the worst sequels of all time as well as ``Trail of the Pink Panther,'' which was cobbled together after the death of the franchise's star, Peter Sellers, from outtakes from previous movies.

``I think moviegoers are much more open to sequels because the quality has definitely improved,'' Dergarabedian said. ``Audiences used to be kind of gun-shy after being fooled enough times. A lot of sequels were cheap knockoffs, a way to capitalize on the popularity of certain films.''

And audiences have remained discriminating.

While recent sequels such as ``The Mummy Returns,'' ``Rush Hour 2,'' ``Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me'' and ``Mission: Impossible 2'' were bona-fide blockbusters, moviegoers stayed away in droves from such hastily released follow-ups as ``Scary Movie 2'' and ``Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.''

But studios have good reason for going to the well again and perhaps again.

``Not all of them work but for the most part, going in, a studio is assured of a certain income with a sequel,'' said John Shaw, president of Movieline International, a box office tracking firm. ``It makes sense for the exhibitor and home-video outlets, that they know what's coming and what they can count on. If you can make the film at a reasonable cost, even if you make half the money, it will give you a profit.''

Huge franchises rare

Some franchises seem to operate on their own set of rules. The 20th James Bond installment, ``Die Another Day,'' is set for release in November. The ``Star Trek'' movies have performed strongly for 20 years and the five ``Star Wars'' films released since 1977 have all been blockbusters.

``These are movie franchises that aren't trend-related or flash-in-the-pans like 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' or the 'Scream' films,'' Farasati said. ``The key is that the franchises that last are always changing, keeping their fan base but getting younger fans. That's why every time they bring in a new Bond, it's a good thing.''

Indeed, the James Bond series has had five different actors in the title role since the 1960s - from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan. Similarly, the series of films featuring CIA hero Jack Ryan have been hits featuring three different actors. The most recent, ``The Sum of All Fears,'' starring Ben Affleck, will easily outgross previous installments that starred Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin.

Waiting more than a decade between installments can work for or against a film. For example, the 15 years between the end of the original ``Star Wars'' trilogy and the start of the current one only whetted the public's appetite for ``The Phantom Menace'' in 1999. But ``Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles'' hit theaters with a thud last year, unable to revive the public's interest in a franchise that had been dormant since 1988.

The franchise that began with 1981's ``Raiders of the Lost Ark'' will be put to a similar test in 2005 with the release of ``Indiana Jones 4,'' with Harrison Ford reviving one of his signature roles after a 16-year gap.

``When you wait that long between installments, you've either given a franchise time to become fresh again or the trend has been given time to elapse,'' Farasati said.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will have his lagging box office appeal put to the test when ``Terminator 3'' hits theaters next year, 12 years after ``Terminator 2'' crushed the competition.

``It gets trickier,'' Dergarabedian said. ``That's why the 'Star Wars' movies are so impressive. They've been around for 25 years. Once you start getting to No. 3 or 4, it's a rare commodity that can still have a franchise. It's really a fine art to creating and maintaining a franchise.''

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2002: SEQUEL-MANIA

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