Summer Movie Preview
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The summer season used to be June, July, and August.
But according to the contemporary movie calendar, it's now May, June, and July.
After all, why would any potential blockbuster open in August when it could come our way earlier than that and keep making money right through to September?
The 2017 summer movie season offers its usual array of splashy, escapist wide releases, featuring a number of sequels and remakes mixed in with the original concepts, most aimed at a entertainment-seeking, multi-generational audience.
So look for these come-hither titles to open at multiplexes in approximately this order, each sporting four-star potential until it actually opens:
Chris Pratt returns in the sequel to the Marvel comic book-inspired, comedic science-fiction lark, a 2014 smash, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn plays daughter and mother on an exotic vacation after the daughter's been dumped in Snatched.
Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law star in an epic adventure drama in director Guy Ritchie's take on the classic legend in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
Michael Fassbender and James Franco co-star in director Ridley Scott's science-fiction horror-thriller sequel, a follow-up to Prometheus, in Alien: Covenant.
Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow for a fifth installment in the comedic-swashbuckler franchise in The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
The TV series that would never become a movie has become a movie, as Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron co-star in the slow-mo-on-the-beach comedy, Baywatch.
Israeli actress Gal Gadot stars as the Amazon-princess title character in a comic book-inspired action-adventure fantasy in Wonder Woman.
Mischievous elementary school students create a superheroic title character in the animated comedy based on a series of children's books in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.
Tom Cruise stars in the reboot of the fantasy franchise about a malevolent princess awakened from her crypt in The Mummy.
Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon lead the ensemble cast of a comedy about a problematic bachelorette party in Rough Night.
Owen Wilson returns as the voice of champion race car Lightning McQueen in the second animated sequel, Cars 3.
Naomi Watts plays a single mother raising a child genius in the family drama, The Book of Henry.
Colin Farrell portrays the character portrayed in the original by Clint Eastwood, in the remake co-starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, in the Civil War-era drama, The Beguiled.
Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Hopkins co-star in the fifth entry in the science-fiction-thriller franchise from director Michael Bay in Transformers: The Last Knight.
Steve Carell voices two characters in the second animated-comedy sequel about an attempt at world domination in Despicable Me 3.
Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler play a married couple who open an illegal casino in their basement after they spend their daughter's college fund in the comedy, The House.
Tom Holland plays Peter Parker and his titular alter-ego superhero in the Marvel Comics-inspired reboot, Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Woody Harrelson joins the cast of this second science-fiction sequel in which genetically evolved apes battle humans in War for the Planet of the Apes.
Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, and Kenneth Branagh co-star in director Christopher Nolan's real-life World War II combat thriller, Dunkirk.
Charlize Theron stars as the title character, an MI6 agent in Berlin during the Cold War, in the mystery-thriller, Atomic Blonde.
Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba co-star in a science-fantasy western thriller based on the novels of Stephen King in The Dark Tower.
Blake Liveley stars as a blind wife who unexpectedly regains her sight in the suspense thriller, All I See Is You.
Ansel Elgort plays a getaway driver struggling to escape the criminal life in the action crime comedy, Baby Driver.
Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson team up as, respectively, a bodyguard and a hitman, in the action comedy, The Hitman's Bodyguard.
And Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones team up as an FBI agent and a mob lawyer in the witness-protection action comedy, Villa Capri.
That ought to keep moviegoers busy until September...
