August is the end of the summer movie season, when audiences seem to tire of the typical summer movie fare, but last year Transformers managed to keep attracting big crowds, and perhaps some of the 2008 July releases will be able to do the same. But the 2008 August releases, though they present plenty of question marks, could make that difficult if they can even begin to achieve some of the success of previous releases in their various franchises. 

The effects-heavy modern Mummy series, which began with great success ($416 million worldwide) in 1999, returns for the third time with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (August 1st) with Brendan Fraser once again in the lead role.

Two weeks later on August 15th was supposed to be the debut date for the live action version of Akira Toriyama's Dragonball, but Fox has decided to move the film to April of 2009 where it will face much less competition (see "Goku Backs Down").  The primary reason for the shift was that Lucasfilm plans to debut its Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series in theaters on the same weekend that the live action Dragonball was to premiere, which would have left the two films fighting head-to-head for the same youthful demographic. 

After the debut of what could be the last theatrical gasp of the Star Wars saga (though the movies may come back in 3D versions), the potency of Tinseltown's releases diminishes quickly until the pace picks up again in Q4.  On August 22nd Lionsgate will release Bangkok Dangerous starring Nicholas Cage, a remake of the first film by the Pang brothers (see "Lionsgate Acquires Pang Brothers Film") that could stir interest in the original.  Another film with genre credentials, the science fiction epic Babylon A.D., which stars Vin Diesel and is based on the novel Babylon Babies by Georges Dantec, debuts on August 29th.

The third Marvel comics-based film of 2008, Punisher War Zone, debuts on September 12th.  Produced by Lionsgate, the film is a sequel to the 2004 Punisher film, which starred Thomas Jane as Frank Castle.  In Punisher War Zone Ray Stevenson replaces Jane, and it should be interesting to see if audiences will respond to the burly Brit, who was simply great in HBO's Rome series.

October of course means Halloween and horror films and this year will be no different.  Remakes of horror classics like Halloween have done surprisingly well and MGM is releasing a new version of David Cronenberg's classic Scanners, with a screenplay by David (Batman Begins) Goyer, on October 17.  A week later Lionsgate is releasing Saw V, the latest annual installment in torture-heavy horror franchise that has dominated the October horror film scene for the past few years.

Three other films of interest are opening on October 24th.  In a classic example of counter-programming Disney is releasing High School Musical 3, which should pull in a younger, more female audience that is unlikely to attend horror movies anyway.  After the first two HSMs set cable TV ratings records, Disney is taking the series to the big screen, something that is quite rare but clearly warranted by the popularity of this series.  Tokyopop's HSM Cinemanga, like most of the popular TV movie's tie-in merchandise, has done very well.  Also, as it did last year, Disney is also going to release Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, in what could become an annual Halloween tradition that will keep this evergreen property (which is especially potent in terms of toys and statues) in the public eye.

The Weinstein Company, which is clearly not going to be left out when it comes to releasing macabre movies in late October, plans to debut Igor, an animated saga about a town where everyone is a mad scientist and they all have their hunch-backed lab assistants named "Igor."  Look for IDW's prequels and adaptation of Igor (see "Joe Hill, Angel, Igor"), as well as Corgi's is full line Igor action figures, statues, plush and more (see "Corgi Gets Igor, Beatles & Halo 3 Licenses").

Just as the "summer" movie season now begins in the first week in May, so the "holiday" season starts in the first weekend in November with the release of Dreamworks animated film, Madagascar 2: The Crate Escape.  Inkworks has the trading card license for Madagascar (see "Inkworks Gets Madagascar Sequel"), which should be in theaters through Thanksgiving and well into December.

However the movie that is likely to dominate the Thanksgiving weekend will be Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opens on November 21st and should support the usual panoply of Harry Potter tie-in merchandise.

As it looks right now genre films are giving Harry Potter a wide berth -- it won't be until December 12th that Fox's science fiction remake, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Summit Entertainment's adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's novel Twilight, a popular vampire romance targeting female readers, debut.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film was supposed to open on Christmas, but Paramount, faced with a lack of major 2009 offerings, moved it to May 8th, 2009 to shore up its summer releases (see "Trek Movie Transported to 2009").  As noted above Fox moved the live action Dragonball to the spring of 2009 as well.  Right now, largely because of the writers' strike, the summer of 2009 is pretty much wide open, though studios are scrambling madly to fill in the gaps.  Still, as lame as the second half of 2009 might turn out to be, the first three months of the year offer two of the best opportunities of the decade for retailers of graphic novels, Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit, which debuts on January 16th, and Zack Snyder's film version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, which is set for March 6th.

For part one, see: Best in Shows 2008, Part I.