Summer 2007: The ultimate movie battle

Ocean's boys vs. a kid named Potter
The third edition (gee, this really is the season of the three) of “Ocean’s Thirteen,” starring a couple of no names like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Al Pacino, comes out June 8. A month later will be the return of the Hogwarts gang in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Since the lowest of the four “Harry Potter” pictures grossed $249 million domestically and book sales aren’t slowing down anytime soon, chances are “Phoenix” and Warner Bros. will be just fine.

“Phoenix” and “Ocean’s” are only two of a seemingly endless supply of sequels arriving next summer. Besides the May troika previously discussed, Fox has the “Fantastic Four 2” and Bruce Willis’ tough-guy cop John McClane in “Live Free or Die Hard”; Universal replaces Jim Carrey with Steve Carell in the “Bruce Almighty” follow-up, “Evan Almighty”; New Line sees what type of commotion Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker can make in “Rush Hour 3”; and Universal gets re-Bourne again in “The Bourne Ultimatum,” with Matt Damon.

And, finally, one of the great TV families of all time takes its act to the big screen with “The Simpsons Movie” at the end of July. Whether it will bring in the “d’oh” is tough to say at this point — will people pay $12 at the movies to see what they can watch at home for free? — but it sure will be fun to see if the “Simpsons” writers allow their characters to be a bit more expressive with coarser language as they’ll be free of network censors trying to ruin every hysterical double entendre, and worrying about who the show might offend.

So enjoy those Oscar hopefuls that are now starting to hit multiplexes on a weekly basis. They’ll enlighten, create discussion and, for the most part, prove your money’s worth.

And while they might make critics happy, they probably won’t do too much for shareholders of Sony, Viacom and Disney. They’ll rely on Spidey, Shrek and Captain Jack next summer for that.

Stuart Levine is a senior editor at Daily Variety. He can be reached at .

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