DEJA VIEW MORE THAN EVER, REMAKES ARE GETTING THE GREEN LIGHT IN HOLLYWOOD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The 2005 summer movie season is blessedly short on major sequels/prequels (``Star Wars: Episode III,'' ``Batman Begins,'' another ``Deuce Bigalow'').

This should be celebrated. But what are ungrateful critics doing? Complaining that there are more remakes of old movies and TV shows than ever.

They're right, of course, volume-wise anyway. A remake of the Burt Reynolds prison football comedy, ``The Longest Yard,'' starring Adam Sandler and Reynolds in a different role, comes out Friday.

``The Honeymooners,'' ``Herbie: Fully Loaded,'' ``Bewitched,'' ``War of the Worlds,'' ``Dark Water,'' ``Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,'' ``The Bad News Bears,'' ``The Dukes of Hazzard'' and ``The Pink Panther'' are all on tap to open by August.

Even the comic book adaptation ``Fantastic Four'' can technically be called a remake of a cheap, earlier version that was never released, while the fact-based skateboarding saga ``Lords of Dogtown'' echoes a recent documentary on the same subject.

While all of this has raised predictable cries of ``Doesn't Hollywood have any new ideas?'' a closer look reveals that good reasons for revisiting earlier shows abound.

As with sequels, there is a universal commercial advantage to releasing any title that has the slightest name recognition, even if it's only for a sitcom from the 1950s. Audiences are consistently more attracted to films with familiar elements than to unknown quantities.

Further, many filmmakers have a passionate love for the properties they're revisiting. For others, there's great creative challenge in reinterpreting a known commodity via contemporary sensibilities and/or cutting edge special effects.

Perhaps most enlightening of all, practically every producer and director interviewed for this article agreed that they'd rather see more original movies made. Of course, most of them also insisted that their films this summer aren't, in the strictest sense, remakes.

``It's become, like, a dirty word, because studios are being accused of a lack of creativity because of a reliance on remakes,'' says ``Hazzard'' producer and former Warner Bros. executive Bill Gerber. ``But really, that's not a fair criticism for a number of reasons. One is, people have been remaking movies since the movie business started: 'A Star Is Born,' 'Pygmalion,' 'Maltese Falcon,' the list goes on and on. Two, in the case of 'Dukes of Hazzard' or 'S.W.A.T.' or other movies based on TV shows, they're based mainly on the characters in the show and you still have to come up with a good movie.''

That's what Nora Ephron felt when she was asked to make a movie based on the '60s sitcom ``Bewitched.'' Instead of just bringing the show's mortal-marries-a-witch concept to the big screen, the ``Sleepless in Seattle'' writer-director went meta, with a story about a new ``Bewitched'' TV series whose star (Nicole Kidman) turns out to actually possess magical powers.

``Hollywood isn't exactly famous for going outside the box these days, right?'' Ephron notes. ``But what you hope is that if you're going to do something like this, it will be a little unexpected. That's what the plot of this movie is, for sure. It's not your conventional thing.''

How much to vary from the original concept is often the central creative issue on a remake, though.

``It's a tricky business,'' notes ``Yard'' director Peter Segal, ``because you can either stray too far from the original and anger an audience, or you can do an absolute Xerox, shot-for-shot, as some people have done, and irritate them in that respect.''

That brings painful memories of Gus Van Sant's 1998, shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic ``Psycho'' to mind. Indeed, some feel that, if you're going to remake something, the less-beloved the original property was, the better.

``Where it gets dicey is when you get into movies that the audience feels they've seen done properly,'' says Bill Mechanic, another studio executive turned producer. ``When I was at Fox, I had people that were always trying to redo 'All About Eve,' movies like that. Y'know, that was done pretty damn good the first time, and as an audience I really didn't want to see that movie remade.''

Mechanic's remake of the Japanese horror movie ``Dark Water,'' he hopes, will benefit from unfamiliarity. Starring Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and directed by Brazilian art film auteur Walter Salles (``Central Station,'' ``The Motorcycle Diaries''), it's aiming for psychological depth and classy production values, not the slavish re-creation of superficial shocks that marked other Japanese horror reinterpretations such as ``The Grudge'' and ``The Ring.''

For other familiar-sounding summer titles, class means going back beyond previous movie incarnations and getting closer to original literary sources.

``I'm sure everybody says that they're not doing a remake,'' notes ``Chocolate Factory'' producer Richard Zanuck. ``But we don't even have the same title! What (director) Tim Burton wanted to do was go right back to Roald Dahl's book, which that first film, 'Willy Wonka,' strayed considerably from. Of course, it's the same basic premise. But we're not a musical; it's a whole different conception. It's Tim Burton's version of what Roald Dahl put on paper.''

Producer Kathleen Kennedy similarly insists that Steven Spielberg's ``War of the Worlds'' is a contemporary adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel that references neither the 1953 movie nor Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio play, both of which were based on the same material. She will allow, though, that a modern version loaded with Industrial Light & Magic's special effects will likely conquer any previous interpretations.

``I think an alien invasion in 2005 is going to be better than an alien invasion in 1953,'' Kennedy wryly notes. But she also adds that ``I'm not a big fan of remakes. I'd much rather work on something that's an original idea. If there's the germ of an idea there that can be reinterpreted, then it's worth doing, absolutely. But then, you are deviating from just a flat-out remake. It's more interesting to be inspired by something that may have come before and then reinterpret it.''

There is no more apparent reinterpretation coming out this summer than ``The Honeymooners.'' Like the successful Eddie Murphy remakes ``The Nutty Professor'' and ``Dr. Dolittle,'' an African-American star has the lead role made famous by a white actor. This version of the seminal '50s sitcom replaces Jackie Gleason with Cedric the Entertainer as the hapless Ralph Cramden.

``In this case, I don't think anybody can do Jackie Gleason,'' says producer David T. Friendly. ``Gleason was one of a kind. So the twist that we came up with for this movie, which I think really freshens it up, is doing it African-American. But we've kept the aspirational nature of the TV episodes; Ralph just wants to give his wife a better life. That's also important; people don't want to go see a 'Honeymooners' that's completely disconnected from the old show. But they also want to see something that's contemporary.''

Despite all the effort that may be put into making remakes fresh and worthwhile, it's hard to shake the prejudice against tried-and-true material.

``Nowhere is it written that you can't make a great movie by remaking another movie, even a great one,'' says film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. ``There's no restriction to doing it. Sometimes it does seem presumptuous - there's no getting around that. And far too often, it does seem like a gigantic waste of time and money because everyone would be better served by simply reissuing the original.''

There is also the fact that, commercially, remakes have not proven as reliable at the box office as sequels.

``Some of them do great, some of them just tank, you never know,'' notes Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. ``With sequels, at least you have something that usually has been released within one or two years of each other, not 20 years after the original film. So I think sequels are a little bit of a safer bet. Some of the highest-grossing movies of all time, both opening weekend and total gross, are sequels. Remakes aren't quite at that level.''

Still, the one thing that will ensure a steady stream of remakes for as long as there are movies is the power of nostalgia among both audiences and filmmakers. Of course, nostalgia is a very subjective thing. Some even have it for the time when remakes weren't quite as ubiquitous as they are now.

``It's sad, in a way, that there isn't more emphasis on original ideas,'' laments ``Chocolate Factory'' producer Richard Zanuck, who once headed 20th Century Fox, the studio that his father, Darryl, founded. ``It was very seldom, in the nine years that I ran the studio, that we ever made a remake.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

19 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) ``The Love Bug''

(2 -- cover -- color) ``Bewitched''

(3 -- cover -- color) ``Willy Wonka''

(4 -- cover -- color) ``The Longest Yard''

(5 -- cover -- color) ``The Pink Panther''

(6 -- cover -- color) ``The Honeymooners''

(7 -- cover -- color) ``The Dukes of Hazzard''

(8 -- 9) The Bad News Bears

Billy Bob Thornton takes on Walter Matthau's classic role of a former minor league baseball player who coaches a kids' losing baseball team.

(10 -- 11) The Longest Yard

Adam Sandler portrays imprisoned quarter-back Paul Crewe, the same role played by Burt Reynolds.

(12 -- 13) The Honeymooners

Cedric the Entertainer reprises Jackie Gleason's famous New York City bus driver, Ralph Kramden.

(14) Bewitched

Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell are Samantha and Darrin in the remake of the TV classic.

(15) Herbie: Fully Loaded

Lindsay Lohan is the new owner of No. 53, the VW bug with a mind of its own.

(16 -- 17) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Johnny Depp melts into the Gene Wilder role in the remake of ``Willy Wonka.''

(18 -- 19) War of the Worlds

Tom Cruise stars in a contemporary adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel.