Matt Lanter, Carmen Electra, Kimberly Kardashian, G-Thang, Nicole Parker, Crista Flanagan and Ike Barinholtz starred in “Disaster Movie.” This is a new comedy movie that parodies disaster films.

Disaster Movie was written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. The movie will be released by Lionsgate on Aug. 29, 2008.

The movie would be about a group of young people being targeted by a series of natural disasters and catastrophic happenings. Since this movie is a parody, the viewer would be visiting familiar scenes from other famous movies here.

The movie poster that was released to promote Disaster Movie hinted that “Al Gore was right.” This was a reference to his documentary-like film; “An inconvenient Truth”, that was made in 2006.

Mount Olympus never had such a potent gang as Marvel Comics, whose vast pantheon ranges from Hollywood A-lister Spider-Man to the murky shape-shifting process server Ditto.

Now producing its own film adaptations for all but a few previously licensed superheroes, Marvel Studios unveils “The Incredible Hulk” on the heels of blockbuster “Iron Man,” whose 2010 sequel will be followed by an ambitious Marvel lineup.

Headlining their own upcoming movies are Norse thunder god Thor, super soldier Captain America and bug impersonator Ant-Man, those adventures culminating in 2011’s Marvel all-star tale “The Avengers.”

With an estimated 5,000 characters and a wealth of stories dating back nearly 70 years, Marvel could spin an endless web of big-screen yarns.

“It’s inexhaustible,” said Gale Anne Hurd, a producer on “The Incredible Hulk” and Ang Lee’s critically drubbed 2003 take on the character, “Hulk.” “What I love is, Marvel is now controlling Marvel’s destiny. They are the greatest caretakers of the characters and the stories.”

Until “Iron Man,” the company watched big movie studios count their millions on superpowered comic adaptations of Spidey, X-Men, Fantastic Four and other Marvel properties. Marvel made some cash by licensing the characters for films, but it was a pittance compared to what studios hauled in on such billion-dollar franchises.

Following George Lucas’ “Star Wars” formula, Marvel now finances movies itself and hires studios to release them for a fee, Paramount distributing “Iron Man,” Universal releasing “The Incredible Hulk.”

Marvel keeps all of the profits and retains lucrative rights for toys and other merchandise based on the films.

“The financial upside on a movie like `Iron Man’ or `Incredible Hulk’ is multiples of multiples of what we had in the old arrangement,” said David Maisel, chairman of Marvel Studios, a division of Marvel Entertainment Inc. “We have the power to greenlight our movies. We set our schedule. We’re not reliant on a third party.”

A few elite franchises — among them Sony’s “Spider-Man” and 20th Century Fox’s “Fantastic Four” and “X-Men” with its upcoming “Wolverine” spinoff — remain under those studios’ control.

That still leaves legions of superheroes for Marvel to put on screen.

Iron Man was a beloved character among fans but far from a household name to general audiences. The comic-book gods smiled on his movie adaptation, though, as all the ingredients came together to create an instant Hollywood franchise.

The manic charm of Robert Downey Jr. made billionaire weapons designer Tony Stark as interesting in a business suit as he was inside the metal contraption he builds to fight bad guys. Downey’s own stints in rehab added a nice nuance to the movie’s boozy Stark.

Director Jon Favreau struck an ideal balance between action and character development, resulting in one of the best-reviewed entries in the onslaught of comic adaptations.

After a nearly $100 million opening weekend in May, “Iron Man” is closing in on $300 million, a mark previously reached only by the “Spider-Man” flicks among comic-book movies.

Though the Hulk was more widely known than Iron Man from the comic books and the TV series starring Bill Bixby, no one in Hollywood expects his new movie to put up those kinds of numbers.

“Previews of this film have been mediocre. The buzz seems to be lacking,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst who follows Marvel for Janco Partners.

The Hulk has been a problem child on the big-screen. The 2003 version, which starred Eric Bana as scientist Bruce Banner and featured a cartoonish Hulk hopping around in the desert, opened with a whopping $62.1 million weekend, then a record for June debuts.

But word of mouth was bad, and the audience quickly dried up, leaving one of Marvel’s standard-bearers in Hollywood limbo.

“It was a noble experiment, I think, that first film, but I, like much of the audience, left wanting a lot more than what we got,” said Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios’ president of production.

The new movie is more action-oriented, clocking in at well under two hours, nearly 30 minutes shorter than Lee’s dark, ponderous version.

As with “Iron Man,” Marvel cast an acclaimed actor, Edward Norton, as Banner, the guy who turns into a not-so-jolly green giant when angry. The story emulates the TV show, with Banner a fugitive, and it gives him real villains to battle, including Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky, a soldier transformed into the Hulk’s huge nemesis, the Abomination.

Roth did not see Lee’s “Hulk” but said he expects the new movie will satisfy fans looking for spectacle.

“Our thing opens with a big action sequence. That’s probably going to set the tone with the audience,” Roth said.

While Norton took an active role in reshaping the story and rewriting the screenplay, the notoriously finicky actor almost became a liability after word leaked out that he, director Louis Leterrier and Marvel executives disagreed over the final cut of the movie.

Norton, who typically does little press, declined an interview for this story. The filmmakers downplayed any differences, saying the usual discussions that take place as movies near the finish line were blown out of proportion.

“It was just somebody, somewhere, somehow heard we were arguing, but we were not arguing,” Leterrier said. “We were having a meeting, and maybe somebody walked in and heard Edward saying, `I really want this scene back in.’ But there was no argument.”

There is no argument that Marvel’s move to finance its own movies has paid off, at least so far. A month after “Iron Man” opened, Marvel Entertainment’s stock was trading at an all-time high of about $36 a share.

Analysts take a wait-and-see attitude about whether the strategy will work over the long haul. While Marvel plans to make two movies a year, there is a two-year lag before its next releases, “Iron Man 2” and “Thor.”

“That’s a big hiccup, to have no movies next year,” analyst Hickey said. “They did a phenomenal job with `Iron Man.’ I think the jury’s still out, but the initial read is positive.”

The Marvel logo will be in front of audiences with next year’s “Wolverine” from Fox and this fall’s vigilante thriller “Punisher: War Zone” from Lionsgate, which retains the rights to that Marvel franchise.

A clear benefit Marvel has gained by making its own movies is creative control. Comic-book fans are perpetually wary that Hollywood will mess up their favorite characters. With Marvel calling the shots, fans can rest a little easier that the movies will remain true to their origins.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

“Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” has no sex and not much of a city.

But this G-rated movie adventure is shaping up as Hollywood’s next serious bid for female viewers, some of whom showed their power by pushing the R-rated comedy “Sex and the City” to surprisingly strong first-weekend ticket sales of more than $57 million two weeks ago.

At first glance, the films have little in common, apart from their skew toward the female.

“Sex” runs hot, while “Kit” — scheduled for wide release on July 2, the same day as “Hancock,” starring Will Smith — does not. Fans of the fictional Manhattan writer Carrie Bradshaw, the heroine of “Sex and the City,” are often over 40. Ms. Kittredge, an aspiring reporter based on Mattel’s incredibly popular American Girl doll of the same name, mostly appeals to girls between 7 and 12.

Yet the films have a certain kinship. Each was made by a studio — “Kit” by Picturehouse, “Sex” by New Line Cinema — that was only weeks ago marked for elimination by the same corporate parent, Time Warner Inc.

And “Kit” has a shot at attracting an intense niche audience of the sort that boosted “Sex” at a time of year that has become better known for fantasies like the “Spider-Man” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, with their broad demographic appeal.

“I’m scared out of my mind,” said Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, a producer of “Kit Kittredge,” speaking by telephone last week. She was referring to an unconventional decision by Picturehouse executives to open this relatively small film in around 1,800 theaters, putting it in competition with potential blockbusters like “Hancock,” from Sony Pictures, and “Wall-E,” from the Walt Disney Company’s Pixar Animation Studios.

“Kit,” which cost about $10 million to produce, stars Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and features an ensemble that mingles unknown child actors with adult pros like Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci, Chris O’Donnell and Joan Cusack. Set in 1934, it tells the story of a Cincinnati girl who is trying to get the local newspaper to take her seriously as a reporter, even as her family and just about everyone else struggles with the Great Depression.

(Julia Roberts, a client of Ms. Goldsmith-Thomas when she was a talent agent, is an executive producer of “Kit.” The two were among those with producing credits on earlier television movies based on three other American Girls: Molly, Felicity and Samantha.)

That quite so innocent an enterprise should be in a position to challenge much racier movies with much higher budgets has much to do with the promotional power of American Girl, which, like HBO’s long-running “Sex and the City” series, is helping to prime loyal fans for a first film based on the brand.

In the toy world, American Girl’s characters — “they never refer to them as ‘dolls,’ ” Bob Berney, the president of Picturehouse, said in an interview last week — are unusual in that they come with detailed story lines, from various eras, delivered in books that accompany each figure.

Kit Kittredge, spunky and a bit confused by the economic crunch around her, has been the central character in a half-dozen titles that have contributed to the sale of some 120 million books since the company was founded in 1986, said Ellen Brothers, American Girl’s president and a producer of the film.

“We approve all the marketing,” Ms. Brothers said, describing her company’s close involvement with the making and selling of the movie. And American Girl has been using its considerable reach to promote what it is calling “Kit’s Big-Screen Debut.”

The company’s mail-order catalog, a primary engine for sales, has a blurb promoting the movie on its May cover. Cities with American Girl retail outlets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and suburban Atlanta — will get to see the movie early, beginning on June 20. That first round is being helped along on the Web with Kit’s movie blog and, at the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles, with the giveaway of “Kit’s Home on Abbott Place,” an elaborate playhouse built by Pardee Homes as part of a benefit for the homeless.

Last Saturday mothers and daughters trooped through the siding- and stone-veneered structure to admire it, and to donate $5 for “opportunity tickets” — never say “raffle” — that buy a shot at taking it home. “ ‘Win Me?’ ” one mother gasped, reading a sign outside, “Oh, my God!”

Other plans include movie-night dinners at the in-store American Girl cafes, which begin to sound, at least a little, like the viewing parties that pushed “Sex and the City” over the top during its May 30 opening weekend.

Allie Mayer, a publicist for movietickets.com, said the service had seen “steady activity” since it began selling tickets for the early engagement last month.

Mr. Berney said a box-office success would be “a little bittersweet”: His company will remain intact only long enough to release its existing films, including “Kit,” “Mongol” and “The Women” (scheduled for fall). To date, the studio’s biggest box-office hit has been “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which took in $37.6 million at the domestic box office in 2006.

If “Kit” works, its success would owe something not just to the promotions, but also to the straight-shooting approach of a director, Patricia Rozema, whose earlier work includes “Mansfield Park” (1999) for Miramax.

“I don’t think you talk down to children when you make a movie for them,” Ms. Rozema said. She spoke in a telephone interview about Kit’s rather intricate on-screen problem, which include doubts about a father, played by Mr. O’Donnell, who leaves home in search of work, and no small difficulties with a newspaper editor played by Wallace Shawn.

Still, Kit preserves her G-rated innocence, something Ms. Rozema said had become too rare, even in films aimed at the young. (“Bratz: The Movie,” which was based on a doll line and took in about $10 million for Lionsgate last summer, was rated PG.)

“They don’t need to be rattled,” she said. “They’re rattled enough.”