"Major fireworks are looming over next year's Fourth of July weekend if Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox both stick to their plans to launch major sci-fi films on one of the most lucrative moviegoing weekends of the year.

Fox was first to plant its banner on the holiday: Late last year, it announced that its adaptation of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four -- starring Michael Chiklis and directed by Tim Story -- would open Friday, July 1, the beginning of the four-day holiday weekend next year as the Fourth falls on a Monday.

But Paramount Pictures is now moving onto the same territory with plans to open its War of the Worlds -- a Paramount/DreamWorks co-production based on the H.G. Wells novel, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise -- on Wednesday, June 29, two days before Four's scheduled opening.

And, so far, neither studio is backing down.

'Fantastic Four' is in the league of 'X-Men' and 'Spider-Man,' and over the last two summers those movies have opened to an average of over $100 million, Fox executive vp marketing Jeffrey Godsick said. 'Fantastic Four' has been shooting for a while and looks to be true to its name -- fantastic.

Paramount declined comment.

For Fox, the situation has to smack of a double dose of deja vu.

The studio already has withstood one challenge from Paramount. This year, Paramount shuffled the opening dates for its planned sequel Mission: Impossible 3, also starring Cruise. Originally, Paramount eyed dates earlier in May for Mission 3, first circling May 6, then considering May 13. But as the early May dates grew increasingly crowded, Paramount moved Mission 3 to June 29, setting up the possibility of a spy vs. sci-fi showdown with Four.

Mission 3, though, ran into other roadblocks. When director Joe Carnahan exited the project in July, Paramount had to reassess its game plan, and ultimately moved the movie's production and release back a year in order to wait for director J.J. Abrams to come aboard.

That left Fox with a bit of clear sailing for the July Fourth weekend. The only other wide release scheduled for that frame is Buena Vista's animated film Chicken Little from Disney, which Fox views as family-oriented counterprogramming that would not compete directly for the sci-fi aficionados expected to flock to Four.

With ""Mission 3"" temporarily sidelined, Paramount gave an urgent greenlight to the War remake, which is scheduled to begin production in November. Initially, the studio listed it simply as a 2005 release, but as plans have firmed up, Paramount is now aiming to go head-to-head with Four even though it will face a much tighter postproduction schedule than Four will.

The situation is a familiar one for Fox. This summer, Fox was the first to claim the July Fourth weekend, seeing it as the ideal date to launch I, Robot because Robot's star, Will Smith, has a solid history of successful July Fourth weekend openers.

But then Sony Pictures, confronting production delays on Spider-Man 2, moved that film from an early summer May 7 bow to Wednesday, July 30. And Fox, rather than have its robots duke it out with Spidey, blinked and shifted ""I, Robot"" by two weeks to July 16.

Spider-Man took in $116 million during the four-day frame and went on to gross $371 million domestically. I, Robot grabbed $52.2 million over a three-day bow and went on to collect $142.4 million domestically.

Still, Fox's marketing team managed to take advantage of the situation, putting an I, Robot trailer in front of Spider-Man 2 and using street teams to market the movie aggressively to the hordes of audiences lining up to catch Spider-Man.

Whether or not either War or Four ultimately stages a strategic retreat promises to be one of the first real cliff-hangers of the 2005 summer season.

Source: /www.hollywoodreporter.com"">Hollywood Reporter.

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