It seems that now is the time for reviving movie sagas and producers are launching more and more new projects involving old movie characters. ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ served as proof that the success of the new movies in the ‘Die Hard’ and ‘James Bond’ series was not just luck. It seems that if you have a well known hero, a great team and a good marketing campaign, you don’t need anything else. So let’s take a look at what the future holds, and what old but gold heroes and villains are about to be brought back to life.

This year’s July 18 will bring viewers a chance to see Batman, played by Christian Bale, take on Joker (Heath Ledger), a psychotic bank robber that terrorizes Gotham City. The movie comes three years after the previous Batman installment entitled ‘Batman Begins,’ and is the sixth movie in the franchise.

‘Friday the 13th’ will hit cinemas on February 13, 2009. The movie is a remake of the original 1980 horror movie that had no less than 10 sequels, the last of them, ‘Freddy vs. Jason,’ being released in 2003.

The back to the origins trend continues with ‘Star Trek,’ whose eleventh installment will explore the early days of the USS Enterprise’s space explorations led by Captain James T. Kirk. The movie will be directed by J.J. Abrams and the script will be written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The screenwriters and the director have previously worked together for ‘Mission Impossible III.’

Freddy Krueger will feed on nightmares yet again, but the date of the release of the new ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ has not been yet announced. The project is currently in preproduction and the only thing that is known about it is that it will be a re-imaging based on the whole series. The cast has not been made public yet, but the Internet Movie Database says that some of the names that are rumored to play Freddy Krueger are Edward Norton, Johnny Depp, Marilyn Manson, Javier Bardem or even Jim Carrey.

And finally, after 14 years passed since Eddy Murphy last played the detective Axel Foxley, the comedian approached Paramount Pictures asking them to produce a new ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ movie. The shooting for the new film will probably begin in 2009, and it could be released in the summer of 2010. Brett Ratner is supposed to be the movie’s director.