LOS ANGELES — You'd think there isn't an original idea left in Hollywood with all the sequels, spinoffs and remakes crowding the 2004 movie lineup. This year's many retreads include about two dozen sequels and prequels and at least a dozen updates of old movies or TV shows.

Three heavy hitters arrive in quick succession during the busy summer season: Shrek 2 premieres in May; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban debuts in June; and Spider-Man 2 opens in July.

While most sequels ratchet up the action, Spiderman director Sam Raimi chose to focus on his hero's moral and personal dilemmas.

"I really turned the film inward on the characters, and it seems like that's what the audience responded to in the first film," Raimi said. "So we focused on developing the characters to the next level, and the actors have taken the performances, all of them, up a notch."

Harry Potter fans who want to see every detail from the books translated into the screen versions might be uneasy over the projected length of Prisoner of Azkaban: less than 2½ hours, the shortest of the series so far.

This time, Rowling's story lent itself to a tighter script than the first two movies, said director Alfonso Cuaron, whose previous movie was the racy hit Y Tu Mama Tambien.

Andrew Adamson says he and his collaborators wrapped up the 2001 original Shrek movie a bit too tightly, making it difficult to develop the sequel. In particular, he says if Shrek and Fiona hadn't married at the end of the first film it would have been possible to string out the romantic mayhem in Shrek 2.

"But it actually forced us to push the story through more twists and turns and prevented us from letting the film fall back into sequel cliches," Adamson. And this time they left themselves some leeway for sequels.

In non-sequel mode, writer-actor Nia Vardalos follows up her surprise blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding with Connie and Carla, a romance that carries shades of the cross-dressing comedies Some Like It Hot, Tootsie and Victor/Victoria.

Connie and Carla stars Vardalos, Toni Collette and David Duchovny in the tale of two female musical-theatre singers who witness a murder and hide out from mobsters by posing as drag queens.

The success of the low-budget Greek Wedding has landed Vardalos in the middle of big-money Hollywood. The music budget alone on Connie and Carla equalled the entire $5-million US cost of making Greek Wedding, Vardalos said.

Sky-high expectations often trip up newly minted stars on their first follow-up to a major hit. But Vardalos figures she's already taken that tumble with the failed TV adaptation My Big Fat Greek Life.

"I'm not worried about the sophomore jinx. That already hit me with the TV show," Vardalos said. "I'm now in my junior year, and I feel great."

Other non-sequel and non-remake highlights include a Wedding Singer reunion for Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in the romance 50 First Dates; Tom Cruise as a hitman in Collateral; Kurt Russell in Miracle, the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team; Gene Hackman as an ex-president running for mayor in Welcome to Mooseport; the end-of-the-world thriller The Day After Tomorrow, with Dennis Quaid; Nicole Kidman's The Interpreter, a tale of United Nations intrigue; Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg reteaming for the drama The Terminal; and Will Smith in the sci-fi adventure I, Robot.

Also: The Village, the latest fright flick from M. Night Shyamalan; the epic Troy, with Brad Pitt as Greek hero Achilles; the musical Andrew Lloyd Webber's the Phantom of the Opera, directed by Joel Schumacher; Oliver Stone's Alexander, with Colin Farrell as the great conqueror; Leonardo DiCaprio in the Howard Hughes biography The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese; Russell Crowe as Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock in Ron Howard's Cinderella Man; and the comic-book adaptations Constantine with Keanu Reeves, Catwoman with Halle Berry, Hellboy with Ron Perlman, and The Punisher with Thomas Jane.

Among the year's other sequels: Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer and pals return in Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which co-stars Queen Latifah, who gets her own spinoff, Beauty Shop; The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, with Anne Hathaway and grandma Julie Andrews on a hubby hunt; Kill Bill _ Vol. 2, the conclusion to Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino's vengeance saga; and Renee Zellweger's return to romantic misadventures in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

Also: Matt Damon's second time out as the amnesiac spy in The Bourne Supremacy; Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller's Meet the Parents follow-up Meet the Fockers; Blade: Trinity, Wesley Snipes' third time as the vampire slayer; Frankie Muniz in Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London; Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, with the Great Dane and his ghost-hunting gang; Naomi Watts in the horror tale The Ring 2; and John Travolta's Get Shorty postscript Be Cool.

With Ocean's Twelve, George Clooney reprises the title role from the heist hit Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the Frank Sinatra flick.

The assassination thriller The Manchurian Candidate, another Sinatra film from the '60s, gets an update with Denzel Washington in the lead.

Among other remakes and adaptations: Kidman in the comic thriller The Stepford Wives, about a town of oddly obedient women; Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as cop partners in Starsky & Hutch, updated from the '70s TV show; Tom Hanks in the Coen brothers' retelling of The Ladykillers, about a gang of inept crooks; The Rock as a take-no-prisoners sheriff in Walking Tall; Flight of the Phoenix, starring Dennis Quaid in the story of crash survivors scavenging their wrecked plane to build a new one.

As well: Van Helsing, a new take on the Dracula saga, featuring Hugh Jackman; Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which transplants the romance to 1950s Cuba; Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon in Shall We Dance, based on the Japanese film; and Dawn of the Dead, with Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley among survivors in a world of undead zombies.

Other movies, while not straightforward remakes, mine familiar territory. Hilary Duff's A Cinderella Story gives a modern twist to the fairy tale as a downtrodden stepdaughter who meets her prince online then leaves behind her cell phone rather than a slipper for him to track her down.

Jennifer Garner does the child-in-an-adult-body thing a la Big in 13 Going on 30, about a teenager who wishes for a new life and suddenly finds herself stuck in the body of her grown-up self.