MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: SNEAKS ’96 : Your job: Try to predict the year’s biggest movies

People lazily scanning the titles of movies scheduled for 1996 might think they had in their hands an old copy of TV Guide. A very old copy, a collectible, with listings for “Sgt. Bilko,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Saint” and “Flipper.” But then they’d come across the first sequel to the movie version of the TV reruns of “The Brady Bunch” and the eighth movie inspired by the reruns of “Star Trek,” and realize they were simply seeing a continuation of Hollywood’s homage to the classics.

For some studio executives, Jane Austen and Shakespeare are literature; for others, it’s Simon Templar and domesticated dolphins. That doesn’t mean the interests of this second group are limited to old television shows. “Beavis and Butt-head” is getting the big-screen treatment this year, too. And certain people will be drooling over the prospects of John Landis’ “The Stupids.” In fact, they’re probably drooling right now.

On a brighter note, Shakespeare, who inspired a choice year-end double feature of “Othello” and “Richard III,” will have three more adaptations to claim in ’96. Kenneth Branagh is doing “Hamlet,” Australia’s Baz Luhrmann (“Strictly Ballroom”) is taking on “Romeo and Juliet” and Broadway’s Trevor Nunn is directing a screen version of the comedy “Twelfth Night.”

Before any of those arrive, we’ll see Branagh’s “A Mid-Winter’s Tale,” the story of an acting troupe preparing for a production of . . . “Hamlet.” And early this year we will see Al Pacino’s directorial debut, “Looking for Richard,” the story of a filmmaker’s struggle to comprehend “Richard III” while shooting it.

Feeling bom-Bard-ed? Miramax also plans to re-release Orson Welles’ 1966 “Chimes at Midnight,” which combines parts of five different Shakespeare plays, including “Falstaff.”

Jane Austen hasn’t been exhausted, either. Miramax has an adaptation coming of “Emma,” the novel that provided the loose inspiration for last year’s Alicia Silverstone hit “Clueless.” Gwyneth Paltrow will play the lead in this one. And the same distributor might start another run on the works of a 19th century female author with Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.”

Naturally, the great bulk of movies heading our way will fall between the classics and “The Stupids,” and somewhere in there are the titles, trends and questions we’ll be discussing over the next 11 months.

Can Jim Carrey stretch himself for another pair of hits in “The Cable Guy” and “Liar, Liar”? Can Eddie Murphy pull his career out of free-fall with “The Nutty Professor,” or will his performance be the best thing that’s happened to Jerry Lewis in 30 years?

Which of the latest adaptations of John Grisham bestsellers will bring in the most box-office dough--Joel Schumacher’s “A Time to Kill” or James Foley’s “The Chamber”? (Hint: The first stars Sandra Bullock, the second Chris O’Donnell.)

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In poring over the titles in this year’s edition of Calendar Sneaks, it appears that the frenzy of bad female bonding movies is at a merciful end, and there are no obvious “Waterworld”/”Cutthroat Island”-size financial disasters looming on the horizon (though Demi Moore’s “Striptease” does make one think simultaneously of “The Scarlet Letter” and “Showgirls”). Certainly, a year without a Joe Eszterhas script deserves an open mind.

The ’96 schedule seems unusually diverse and balanced. The film industry, in its desperation to maintain movies as the preferred software in the rapidly evolving technological age, is actually beginning to reflect the ranging interests of its patrons. Politicians will no doubt find enough evil in the movies this year to keep Hollywood alive as a campaign issue, but the argument may be hollower than ever. There are enough family pictures on the accompanying lists to keep us busy from now through Christmas.

As the power continues to shift in the direction of the talent in Hollywood, it’s no surprise that a few of the major stars would try their hands at directing. More control, more credits, more money. Besides Pacino, both Tom Hanks and Anthony Hopkins will make their directing debuts this year, Hanks with “That Thing You Do,” about a ‘60s rock band, and Hopkins with “August,” another retelling of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” The directors, of course, will also star in those films.

Other actors taking on directing chores for the first time are Kevin Spacey (“Albino Alligator”), Matthew Broderick (“Infinity”) and Steve Buscemi (“Trees Lounge”).

Until Ron Shelton pulled off a commercial upset with “Bull Durham” a few years ago, movies with sports themes were regarded as box-office poison.

There have been plenty since, and this year, there are more than 10, with themes built around gambling, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, bowling and golf. There are two about sports fanaticism, and another about a sports agent.

None would seem to be a tougher sell than golf, a subject depicted seriously only a few times before, notably in Sidney Lanfield’s “Follow the Sun” and George Cukor’s classic “Pat and Mike.” But if anyone can pull it off, it’s Shelton, whose “Tin Cup” stars Kevin Costner as a golf hustler trying to qualify for the U.S. Open, and low-handicapper Don Johnson as one of his rivals.

The year’s best trend may be the relatively small number of big-budget action films and sequels scheduled. In fact, the movie that figures to rake in the largest share of summer business this year is “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Disney’s latest Alan Menken-scored animated musical. Disney plans to prime that audience with “James and the Giant Peach,” its stop-action animated version of Roald Dahl’s children’s adventure story, opening it in early spring.

The most interesting sequels are coming years after their originals. Robert Harling’s “Evening Star” catches up with Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine 13 years after “Terms of Endearment.” “John Carpenter’s Escape From L.A.” comes 15 years after “Escape From New York.” And “Fierce Creatures,” while not exactly a sequel, reunites Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese and Michael Palin eight years after “A Fish Called Wanda.”

Looking at the past year and the coming year from a January perspective is like looking through opposite ends of a telescope. Everything appears distant and insignificant when you look back, especially looking back at 1995, and looms large and promising in the near future. But knowing that the disappointments will outnumber the joys does not necessarily dampen the enthusiasm.

How can a movie lover not get excited about the prospects of a new Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet or James Ivory movie, even if their last films failed? The best predictor of a good time at the movies is always its pedigree, the talent that has delivered for you in the past. And the ’96 schedule has some solid pedigrees.

Coppola’s new film is “Jack,” a drama about a 10-year-old boy with the “aging disease,” giving “Jumanji” star Robin Williams his second shot in a row at playing a boy in a man’s body. Lumet’s “Night Falls on Manhattan” costars Andy Garcia and Richard Dreyfuss in a story dissecting judicial corruption. And in Ivory’s “Surviving Picasso,” Anthony Hopkins segues from his Nixon interpretation to one of the Spanish master.

The usually reliable Stephen Frears (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “The Grifters”) has two movies coming this year: the big-budget “Mary Reilly,” with Julia Roberts playing the housekeeper to Dr. Jekyll (or is it Mr. Hyde?), and “The Van,” the third leg of Dublin author Roddy Doyle’s marvelous Barrytown Trilogy. Alan Parker directed the first one, “The Commitments,” and Frears the second, “The Snapper,” and those films have helped launch a new wave of small, wonderful Irish films.

The inventive Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, have a film coming called “Fargo,” and whatever it’s about--a bollixed kidnapping, it says here--we know it will be interesting to look at. Same goes for Tim Burton’s sci-fi film “Mars Attacks!”

And whenever the cerebral horrormeister David Cronenberg (“The Fly”) takes on a science-fiction theme, as he does with the futuristic thriller “Crash,” it is an occasion.

Spike Lee and John Singleton, the stars of the new black cinema, both have films coming this year, and though their names have proven to be no guarantee of quality, they are responsible for the two best films ever made about the black experience in America--Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and Singleton’s “Boyz N the Hood.”

Lee’s latest film, “Girl 6,” is a comedy about a phone sex operator and appears to be a return, of sorts, to the material of “She’s Gotta Have It,” the 1986 film that launched his career. Singleton’s “Rosewood” dramatizes a racial incident in 1920s Florida.

Among the other dramas we’ll be anticipating: “The Portrait of a Lady,” Jane Campion’s first film since “The Piano”; “The Crucible,” Nicholas Hytner’s follow-up to “The Madness of King George,” with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, and a script adapted from his own play by Arthur Miller; “Mulholland Falls,” a Los Angeles cop story directed by Lee Tamahori, the Maori-Australian who made last year’s stunning “Once Were Warriors”; Barbra Streisand’s “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” with Streisand and Jeff Bridges; Bruce Beresford’s “The Last Dance,” a death row love story with “Casino”-legitimized Sharon Stone and Rob Morrow; Barbet Schroeder’s “Before and After,” with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson; and Mike Newell’s mob thriller “Donnie Brasco,” with Pacino and Johnny Depp.

For sheer drawing power, the movies to watch in ’96 include: “Up Close and Personal,” a story of love and ambition at a TV network, between a rising star (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her mentor (Robert Redford); Ron Howard’s “Ransom,” with Mel Gibson; “Diabolique,” with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani in roles played by Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot in the 1955 French suspense classic; and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Chuck Russell’s thriller “Eraser.”

The most promising pure action film on the schedule may be “The Rock,” which co-stars Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage as an ex-felon and an FBI agent who team up to try to end a hostage crisis on Alcatraz and stop terrorists from lobbing poison gas missiles on San Francisco.

For laughs, there is Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage,” a remake of “La Cage aux Folles,” with Robin Williams back in drag, and Harold Ramis’ “Multiplicity,” with Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell in a story that seems a perfect followup to Ramis’ hilarious “Groundhog Day.”

And for one last piece of good news, Rysher Entertainment assures us that the adaptation of Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” will not be ready for release this year.