SNEAKS ’90 : Let’s Go to the Movies . . . 423 Times (or So)

Can “Dick Tracy” top “Batman”? Will Francis Ford Coppola reclaim the title of World’s Greatest Director with “The Godfather, Part III”? Is “Bad Girls From Mars” a sequel to “Earth Girls Are Easy”?

These questions and others will pop up like tribal warnings as you trudge through the jungle ahead, through Calendar’s sneak previews of the movies of 1990.

Although January is Hollywood’s inventory clearance month, the season when the studios dump their leftovers from the previous year into the market, it is a time of optimism for movie fans. The bitter disappointments of the past are set aside as we look ahead, and though bad movies will hit us like clouds of asteroids in the coming months, there will be--among the 423 movies scheduled for release--the inevitable pleasures.

Looking ahead at this time last year, who foresaw the gems “sex, lies and videotape,” “Drugstore Cowboy” and “Roger & Me,” three films by new directors that have dazzled critics, pleased audiences and launched careers? Spotting the sleepers in advance is as difficult as predicting whether those films we are dying to see will be films to die for.

Scanning the 1990 schedule, it is clear that though we enter a new decade, old trends continue. Sequelmania is still the leading cause of production start-ups. On the list are nearly two dozen sequels, which, when the year is done, will account for about 10% of all movies released.

But unlike 1989, which owed much of its record box office total to sequels to recent hits, the ’90 batch is loaded with follow-ups to films released years ago, some nearly a generation ago.

“The Godfather III” will come out 16 years after “Godfather II” won the series’ second Oscar for best picture. “The Two Jakes” follows “Chinatown” by 16 years. Peter Bogdanovich’s “Texasville” will be released 19 years after “The Last Picture Show.” William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist III” comes 13 years after “II.” Walter Hill’s “Another 48 HRS,” which reunites Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, is eight years removed from the original. Jamie Uys’ “The Gods Must Be Crazy, II” comes six years after the original broke U.S. box office records for a foreign film, and there will be six years between parts one and two of “The NeverEnding Story.”

Even in the horror genre, time has been allowed to pass between exhumations. Joe Dante’s “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” follows six years behind the first batch, while nine years have elapsed between David Cronenberg’s cult hit “Scanners” and “Scanners II: The New Order.”

On the other extreme is Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future III,” which flies in this summer on the coattails of “Back to the Future II,” a Christmas release that is still going strong in theaters near everyone.

On the year’s “A list” of major studio movies is a remarkable number being adapted from books. Among them: Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Nicholas Pileggi’s “Wise Guy,” Carrie Fisher’s “Postcards From the Edge,” John le Carre’s “Russia House,” Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October,” Stephen Koonts’ “Flight of the Intruder,” Scott Turow’s “Presumed Innocent,” Alan Dershowitz’s “Reversal of Fortune,” Peter Viertel’s “White Hunter, Black Heart,” Stephen King’s “Misery” and Paul Bowles’ “Sheltering Sky.”

Independent Cineplex-Odeon is adapting Jim Thompson’s “Grifters,” Universal is financing a film being adapted from the published journals of writer Anais Nin.

Not every movie listed in the coming pages will make its way into Southern California theaters during 1990. There were 410 pictures listed in Calendar’s 1989 sneak previews, but fewer than 300 films were actually released in Los Angeles during the year. Of the others, some did not pass go and went directly to video. Some passed go only in regional markets, then went to video. Some were released in foreign markets and are still looking for American distribution. Others, like bruised pears at a supermarket, weren’t picked up by anybody.

Some of the films in the Sneaks ’89 package are repeated in this year’s, and a few, undoubtedly, will qualify for the 1991 schedule. We can’t remember a sneaks package that didn’t include Brooke Shields’ “Brenda Starr.”