BEACH BLANKET LOTTO

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One may already be here: the quirky romance While You Were Sleeping opened strongly in the U.S. just before the summer rush, and could earn $60 million to $80 million. But Hollywood counts on big stars, muscular action, high concept-and Disney cartoons-to bring in the really serious money. So here's what Americans will get in six successive weekends after Crimson Tide opens: Die Hard with a Vengeance; Casper (the friendly ghost, now a live-action apparition); Madison County; the killer-ape thriller Congo; Batman Forever; and Pocahontas. Then no fewer than three big-adventure films will go head to head: Judge Dredd; Ron Howard's astronaut drama Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks; and the current TV favorite of eight-year-old martial artists, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.

This summer-as in past summers, falls, winters, springs-Hollywood has two rules:

Rule No. 1: Remake what worked before. So The Flintstones (live-action cartoon) begets Casper; The Crow (movie version of a comic book-sorry, graphic novel) sires Judge Dredd; the Ninja Turtles frenzy of recent yore gives way to Morphin endorphins. Four Hollywood pictures last year (the megahit True Lies, as well as the less successful Intersection, Mixed Nuts and My Father, the Hero) were based on French films; so is Nine Months, a comedy about an expectant couple (Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore). The high grosses of three Michael Crichton novels-into-films in two years (Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure) had something to do with Paramount's decision to explore Congo.

Rule No. 2: Remake what didn't work. Transferring popular video games to the big screen, for example, has proved expensive and unproductive -- witness the Super Mario Brothers and Streetfighter films. Undaunted, New Line is bringing the mano-a-macho belligerents of Mortal Kombat to movie life. And what's with all these kilts? First Rob Roy, then Gibson's Braveheart. It's one more genre, like westerns (and astronaut films), that studios make mostly because veteran stars and directors want to. Walter Hill has a new western, Wild Bill, with Jeff Bridges, and the principals hope it will imitate the popular oater Tombstone and not Wyatt Earp, Costner's pricey flop on the same subject.

Costner surely hopes Waterworld returns him to top-star status. The film's trailer suggests a high-voltage adventure with a mythic overlay; James Earl Jones lends his patriarchal voice to images of hope and horror. Jones can also be heard promoting Judge Dredd. His voice is one of many summer-trailer talismans, along with '60s songs, computer imagery, sexual facetiousness of the sort pioneered by James Bond films, and a lot of urgent I-love-you's. In Fluke, one of the summer's few kids' movies, a boy whispers it to his dog.

The Fluke trailer is also typical of the new previews in that it seems to tell the film's entire story. So does the Crimson Tide preview, plot point by plot point, up to and including the climax. Get your granulated motion picture right here, in three hectic minutes! Anything longer is considered the director's cut.