Call it How Hollywood Hopes to Kick-Start the Summer. It's by rolling out, on successive Fridays in May, Tom Cruise, an upside-down luxury liner, a religious riddle and mutant superheroes.

		A complete list of summer releases will appear May 19, but here are early highlights.

If one stumbles, there will be reinforcements ready to move to the front, and that strategy has one box-office guru thinking big. "I think we're going to see a record-breaking May, if I may be so bold," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co.

"It's just chock-full of blockbusters, so we're kind of front-loaded in that sense, but that's OK; at least we'll get some momentum going early on, whereas last year 'Kingdom of Heaven,' 'Monster-in-Law,' 'Kicking & Screaming' and some other films did OK, but you need big films to kick off the summer."

This year, for instance, "Mission: Impossible III" and the kid-friendly "Hoot" will open on May 5. By comparison, "Kingdom of Heaven" and "House of Wax" opened on May 6, 2005, and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was in its second week.

While "Kingdom" featured teen dreamboat Orlando Bloom and "Wax" had Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton and Chad Michael Murray, both were rated R, preventing much of the natural audience from legally buying tickets. That should not be an issue this year, with "M:i:III," "Poseidon," "Da Vinci Code" and (most likely) "X-Men: The Last Stand" with PG-13 labels and "Over the Hedge" carrying a PG stamp.

With the summer accounting for 40 percent of the year's box office, the season's importance cannot be overestimated.

"Star Wars" couldn't do it alone last year, making for a summer when Dergarabedian's throat was raw from doing interviews about "the slump," which became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the end, summer revenue was down 8.5 percent and attendance off by more than 11 percent.

In real numbers: In summer 2004, 637 million tickets were sold. In summer 2005, that figure was 565 million, which also meant concession counters weren't moving as many colossal Cokes, buttery buckets of popcorn and bags of Gummi Bears.

If May proves mild at the box office and June gets off to a jumpy start, "Superman Returns" could save the day, the long July Fourth weekend and the summer. Brandon Routh plays the Man of Steel and Kate Bosworth is Lois Lane in the June 30 movie also featuring Frank Langella, Eva Marie Saint, Parker Posey and Kevin Spacey.

"It's got to be one of the most anticipated films of the summer, and hopefully it will reinvigorate the franchise, just like 'Batman Begins' did, and Warner obviously is well-skilled in breathing new life back into these franchises."

Dergarabedian also expects big things from the second "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, reuniting Johnny Depp, Bloom and Keira Knightley, and says never underestimate romantic comedies such as "The Break-Up," starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, or "Me, You and Dupree" with Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson, Owen Wilson and Michael Douglas.

In "The Break-Up," former "Friends" star Aniston plays an art dealer who calls it quits with her boyfriend, who hosts bus tours of Chicago, but neither is willing to move out of the condo they share. They pull out the stops -- pool table in the living room, dirty clothes in the kitchen cupboards and Aniston apparently wandering around naked -- but wonder if the relationship may be worth saving after all.

The movie will be part entertainment, part chemistry quiz. Will the pair sizzle on screen, as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie did in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"?

In "Me, You and Dupree," Dillon and Hudson are newlyweds who invite an unemployed, homeless pal named Dupree (Owen Wilson) to stay with them. As the husband buries himself at work, Dupree starts charming the bride, her father and neighbors, creating comic complications.

"Nacho Libre," starring Jack Black as a priest moonlighting as a wrestler to save an orphanage, could be a sleeper, and the shelf life on buzz will be tested when "Snakes on a Plane" -- an Internet sensation -- finally opens in mid-August.

In case you've been recovering from a snakebite, it stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent escorting a witness on a commercial flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles when an assassin releases hundreds of deadly snakes.

Computer animation will be used to entice families to see "Over the Hedge," "Cars," "Monster House," "Barnyard" and "The Ant Bully," while July 28's "Miami Vice" starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell as Tubbs and Crockett, will be the obligatory big-screen version of a TV show.

Other familiar faces returning to the megaplex: Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in "The Lake House," Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in "The Devil Wears Prada," Adam Sandler in "Click," the Wayans brothers in "Little Man" and Nicolas Cage in "World Trade Center."

"I think this year's lineup is stronger overall. I think the excitement level will sustain itself much better than last year, and since we won't be just talking about a box-office slump, then we won't be caught up in this negativity that I think hurt the box office last year," the Exhibitor Relations chief says.

So far, attendance is up slightly from last year, due in part to the popularity of family films such as "Ice Age: The Meltdown" (the top grosser so far) and "Eight Below," a steady stream of horror pictures and the romantic comedy "Failure to Launch."

As always, though, moviegoers ask if they should burn $3-a-gallon gas driving to the theater or just add it to their Netflix list and wait for the DVD.

"I think that's the problem with those shrinking video windows, and that can affect any summer; as long as those video windows are shorter and shorter, it's going to cause a lot of worry on the part of theater owners," Dergarabedian says.

That's why the marketing of a summer movie is more important than ever, with the best campaigns suggesting that if you want to be part of the pop culture, you need to see "Da Vinci Code" or "Superman Returns" when it opens, not months later when it lands on your Giant Eagle shelf.

"I still believe that the summer's about seeing the big blockbusters on the big screen, and hopefully people will feel that way this year, as opposed to how they felt last year, which was pretty disgruntled," Dergarabedian says.

The movies were not as good as they needed to be, given the increasing competition for moviegoers' time, dollars and convenience. That is driving some chains to upgrade their theaters and make them more of a destination or throwback to the glory days.

"When the box office is down, it almost would seem counter-intuitive to try and pump a lot of money into the movie theater, in terms of upgrades and amenities, but I think that's the thing they almost have to do," Dergarabedian says, with luxury seating, martini bars or beer, midnight movies, film festivals and restaurant-style food.

"It's a two-fold process: It's the product, which the studios supply, and it's the in-theater experience, which the theater owners supply," Dergarabedian says. "And both of those have to be top-notch."

But there may be nothing that can entice some moviegoers to see "United 93," a dramatic re-creation of Flight 93 on 9/11, or the August release "World Trade Center."

"For 'United 93,' the good news for that film is that it's a great film. It truly is a phenomenal film, and that will hold it in good stead."

Still, Dergarabedian acknowledges there will be some people who will not or cannot see it, although the made-for-cable movies on the subject did well, and good word-of-mouth should bolster the fortunes of "United 93."

"World Trade Center," an Oliver Stone film about two Port Authority policemen who became trapped in the rubble, also could benefit from tapping into a common memory.

"If people are going to go back and revisit that day, through a really well-made movie, that is one way to do that. As long as it pays honor to the people who died, it can be OK. It's a tricky subject, sort of like 'Passion of the Christ.' Nobody knew what that was going to do when it opened."

And we all remember how that turned out.