Reigning box office champion 300 will face competition from six new films at the weekend box office, but it's likely the grisly epic will manage to log a third session at the top. The challengers include one horror film, The Hills Have Eyes 2; two kid flicks, TMNT and The Last Mimzy; and three adult dramas, Shooter, Reign Over Me and Pride. The R-rated Hills sequel has the best shot of taking first place from 300, which earned $33 million last weekend after losing a respectable 54 percent of its opening haul. Industry insiders expect the horror to open in the mid-teen millions, on par with the $15.7 million bow of its predecessor in March 2006. Released by Fox Atomic, the nascent youth-oriented division of art-house studio Fox Searchlight, the new film revolves around a group of National Guard trainees who are attacked by mutants during a training mission in the New Mexico desert. It was directed by Martin Weisz, the German commercial and music video veteran behind 2002's 60 Seconds. Warner Bros. is relaunching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise with the PG-rated TMNT, looking to lure a young male audience. Industry insiders place the film's debut in the low-teen millions. The CGI feature from writer-director Kevin Munroe (Freaky Flyers) takes off as a follow-up to the first two movies in the series that bowed in 1990 and 1991, respectively. TMNT features the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart, Ziyi Zhang, Laurence Fishburne and Chris Evans. Shooter, a conspiracy thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, is likely to bow in the low-teen million range, competing for the same demos as TMNT. The Paramount film was pushed back a week to put more space between it and 300. Wahlberg plays an exiled marksman who is lured back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president. Michael Pena, Danny Glover and Kate Mara co-star for director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day). New Line executives are releasing their boss' first directorial effort in 17 years with the family-friendly Mimzy. The PG film, directed by New Line co-chairman and co-CEO Robert Shaye, revolves around two children (Chris O'Neil and Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) who develop special talents after they discover a mysterious box of toys. Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton and Rainn Wilson also star. Industry insiders have the film pegged for an $8 million-$10 million opening. Reign, from writer-director Mike Binder (Upside of Anger), stars Adam Sandler as a man who lost his wife and daughters in the World Trade Center attacks. He runs into his old college buddy (Don Cheadle), and the two rekindle a friendship that helps Sandler's character deal with his grief. The R-rated film is expected to gross $8 million-$10 million. Lionsgate's Pride, from director Sunu Gonera, stars Terrence Howard in the fact-based story of a Philadelphia swimming coach. It's expected to open in the $6 million-$8 million range.

Titanic stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are set to reunite on the big screen, 10 years after the blockbuster disaster movie. Winslet and DiCaprio famously played doomed lovers in the James Cameron epic and will now play a troubled married couple in an adaptation of Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road. The English actress' husband, Sam Mendes, will direct the movie, when filming begins on the east coast this summer.

Hollywood star Tom Cruise has confirmed he is to star in a film about an attempted assassination plot on former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The War of the Worlds star was offered the part by director Bryan Singer, who was keen to cast Cruise in the as-yet-untitled movie's lead role. Cruise acquired the rights to the film with United Artists studios, which he owns a stake in, last week. Production is expected to start later this year.

Movie actor Woody Harrelson's father, a convicted murderer, has died of a heart attack in prison. He was 69. Charles Harrelson, who was serving two life sentences in Colorado's high-security Supermax prison for the 1979 murder of a federal judge, was found dead in his cell last Thursday. Fremont County Coroner Dorothy Twellman has concluded Harrelson probably died in his sleep. She says, "It appears to be very sudden." Harrelson was convicted of murdering District Judge John Wood outside his San Antonio, Texas, home in May 1979. He denied the killing, but prosecutors said a drug dealer paid him $250,000 to assassinate Wood so he would not preside over a trial. Harrelson had earlier been found guilty of, and served time for, a 1968 killing.

Sean Connery wants to come out of acting retirement to play James Bond's father in the next 007 film. The 76-year-old has been "resting" since making 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but reveals he would jump at the chance to return to the superspy franchise--if producers can afford him. Connery says, "I am resting from acting. So you could say I'm retired. It would have to be something really considerable to bring me back. It would have to be an offer that you can't refuse. "If there was a good part in a Bond film, I'd certainly look at it. "I would never return as James Bond. If the part was well written, I could come back as Bond's father but it would cost them. It would definitely cost them." The actor reveals he quit at Bond because of the overuse of gadgets--and his disappointing salary as the secret agent. He adds, "I was getting disenchanted. Apart from the payment, which was puerile, they were bringing in a lit of science fiction stuff, like the poisonous shoe in From Russia with Love. "They had all these gizmos, which today are commonplace, that I didn't mind, but when you get into the nuclear stuff..."

Get ready for the summer of sequels. Starting with Sony's Spider-Man 3, set to open May 4, and ending with New Line's Rush Hour 3, slated for August 10, the schedule is stacked with high-profile releases that are expected to fill theaters and get cash registers cranking. "Lines beget lines," says Chuck Viane, Disney's domestic distribution president. "You get people in there seeing the trailers for the fall movies and one thing triggers another. That's the really great thing about our business. When we're on a roll, there's a snowball effect." If the summer of 2007 lives up to expectations, it could turn out to be the biggest in box office history, shattering the record held by the summer of 2004, when 557.4 million admissions generated roughly $3.5 billion in revenue during the 15 week period between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Among the other films that are expected to get the record mojo going: Paramount-DreamWorks' Shrek the Third, set for May 18; Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which opens the next week; Warner Bros.' Ocean's Thirteen and Sony's Surf's Up, both set to open June 8; Fox's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, slated for June 15; and Universal's Evan Almighty, set for June 22. The hit parade continues with Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille on June 29, Paramount's Transformers on July 4, Warner Bros.' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and New Line's Hairspray on July 20 and Fox's The Simpsons Movie on July 27. Each studio has a couple of potential summer blockbusters, but could there be too much of a good thing? In the past, there has been more "breathing room" between films, a studio executive posits, wondering if the titles will step on each other's shelf life. "It will be interesting to see if this is a summer where we open big for a week then go away quickly." But while the studios might fret the fate of individual films, the sheer number of big films opening seems to make it a no-lose situation for theater owners. "This is a cyclical business and very dependent on product," says Mike Campbell, CEO of Regal Entertainment Group. "We had a good year in 2006, and I think what we've got upcoming in 2007 looks very, very strong. So I expect to see further recovery." According to trade group the Motion Picture Assn. of America, U.S. box office revenue rose 5.5% to $9.49 billion in 2006, reversing two years of declines that had some observers wondering if the cinema experience was being displaced by home theaters, TiVo, video games and the like. In retrospect, pundits are writing off the 2005 slump to a paucity of product. Based on the strong 2007 lineup, Bank of America analyst Michael Savner recently bumped up his growth estimate for this year by two-tenths of a percentage point to 5.0%. Conscientious effort on the part of theater owners to upgrade the moviegoing experience is also helping. Theaters have been upgrading to more comfortable seating and lobby environments as well as in technical areas like sound, digital projection and 3-D. "There's a lot of good intentions to enhance the moviegoing experience," says DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. "I've met with many people on that side of the business and found them ambitious about innovating."

Hollywood star Cate Blanchett is in negotiations to star in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. The project will see Harrison Ford reprising his role as the intrepid adventurer, with Steven Spielberg again in the director's chair. It is unclear what part Blanchett has been offered, although sources surrounding the project say she is in line for a starring role. The storyline for the new film, which is penned by Spider-Man writer David Koepp, is being kept under wraps. It is not known if Sean Connery will be returning as Ford's movie father in the third sequel. The fourth Indiana Jones installment resurrects the lucrative franchise after nearly 20 years. The film is set to begin filming in June in Los Angeles and will be released in May 2008.