Superheroes and sequel flicks in 2012

Only a decade after shattering opening weekend box office records, Sony will reboot the Spider-Man franchise with Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker in 3D.

Nicholas Cage will return as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in February.

Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the story sees Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider (Nicholas Cage), hiding out in remote Eastern Europe and struggling to repress his curse.

Blaze is recruited by a sect to take on The Devil (Ciaran Hinds), who wants to take over his mortal son’s body on the kid’s birthday. Idris Elba plays an alcoholic warrior monk tasked with finding Ghost Rider.

Johnny Whitworth plays a criminal who is recruited by The Devil to find the boy and is later turned into a demonic creature.

The Marvel superhero team, The Avengers, will introduce themselves to audiences worldwide in early May.

The highly anticipated 3D film will crossover the characters from several Marvel superhero films including Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

Christian Bale will reprise his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, the third instalment in the renewed DC Comics franchise and likely the last from Nolan.

Hollywood’s love affair with sequels - and prequels - continues practically every month of the year.

During the spring, audiences will see Sam Worthington reprise his role as Perseus for Wrath of the Titans (the sequel to 2010’s Clash of the Titans), as well as see the return of the American Pie gang in American Reunion and more outlandish horror-comedic spoofs in a new Scary Movie.

Directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, American Reunion seens Jim, Michelle, Stifler, and their friends reunite in East Great Falls, Michigan for their high school reunion.

Add a baby for Jim and Michelle into the mix, and the pie should be pretty much baked. Expect a solid hit.

Can Sacha Baron Cohen squeeze in another Borat-style success early in the summer with his new film Dictator?

He’s certainly having a go, reuniting with its director, Larry Charles, for a film inspired by a Saddam Hussein-written book.

Anna Faris is co-starring. Expect the usual array of tabloid newspapers to be typically enraged.

In late May, Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith will revive their poular roles as Agents K and J in Men in Black III, which will be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who helmed the first two installments.

When the world is threatened by an evil alien, Agent Jay travels back in time to 1969, where he teams up with the younger Agent Kay to stop an evil villain named Boris (Jemaine Clement) from destroying the world in the future.

Emma Thompson will play take-charge MIB operative Agent Oh, who is monitoring a prison breakout.

A secretive project perhaps related to 1979’s Alien, G.I. Joe 2 (with Dwayne Johnson), Step Up 4, The Bourne Legacy (without Matt Damon though), Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days and The Expendables 2, will also all be released during the summer months.

The second and final part of The Twilight Saga’s Breaking Dawn, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, will unspool in November.

Meanwhile, animated sequels DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3 and Ice Age: Continental Drift, a fourth installment of the Ice Age franchise, will likely satisfy family audiences.