Finding TV Gold in Scripts From the Silver Screen : Television: Remakes of cinema classics are hitting the airwaves. The originals ‘are great stories,’ an executive says, ‘and there are a finite number of great stories in the world.’

The upcoming TV remake of “Sahara” has a lot in common with the classic desert adventure produced more than a half century ago: Same story, same characters, even the same script.

The major difference: Instead of Humphrey Bogart in the lead, it’ll be Jim Belushi.

Jolting as that may sound, it’s just one of a spate of remakes and sequels of past cinema classics now in the works for television. As movie producers see gold in “The Brady Bunch” and “The Fugitive,” their small-screen counterparts are combing film archives for new takes on “Born Free” and “Elmer Gantry.”

Also in the works are new versions of “The Sunshine Boys,” with Peter Falk and Woody Allen in the Walter Matthau/George Burns parts; “A Streetcar Named Desire” with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin in the Vivien Leigh/Marlon Brando roles; and the still-uncast “The Rose Tattoo.”

The originals “are great stories--and there are a finite number of great stories in the world,” says Judd Parkin, ABC’s senior vice president for TV movies and miniseries.

Last Saturday, a new version of “Escape to Witch Mountain” aired as the “ABC Family Movie,” and the same folks are presenting a new “Freaky Friday” tonight. The pair are among a handful of remakes of Disney live-action classics from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. ABC already aired “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” and “The Shaggy Dog.” More are in the works.

Why the frenzy for these past titles?

“People like the familiarity of things,” says Helen Verno, executive vice president of movies and miniseries at Columbia TriStar Television, which is remaking “Sahara.” “Unless you mess it up, you have a built-in audience.”

Producers have tried remakes on TV ever since the rise of the movie-of-the-week in the 1970s, usually to have the projects critically panned or quickly forgotten. Or the memory of the original has been just too hard to overcome.

“You are competing with the existing classics,” says ABC’s Parkin, who is limiting the network’s remakes to family fare. “I’ve had bad experiences in the past where you get compared unfavorably.”

“Indiscreet” (1958) had Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman; a version 30 years later had Robert Wagner and Lesley-Anne Down. In 1949, Joseph L. Mankiewicz cast Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern in “A Letter to Three Wives.” A 1985 version had Loni Anderson, Michele Lee and Stephanie Zimbalist. There was also “Double Indemnity,” Billy Wilder’s 1944 film noir classic with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. The 1973 TV movie featured Richard Crenna and Samantha Eggar.

“It just didn’t have it,” says “Entertainment Tonight” film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. “Richard Crenna and Samantha Eggar are good actors, but it’s tough to wipe (the original) out of your memory.”

Even a cherished classic like “It’s a Wonderful Life” was redone, as “It Happened One Christmas” in 1977 with Marlo Thomas.

“I couldn’t bear to watch,” Maltin says.

That’s not to say that Maltin and other film buffs consider it a sin for producers to touch any past classic.

“When you are talking about a really great original, a movie widely seen and much loved, then there is a question of why they are remaking it,” Maltin says. “ ‘Sahara’ isn’t a movie everyone knows.”

The “Sahara” producers are tinkering as little as possible with the film, which is being made for the Showtime pay-TV channel for next season. Rather than try to update the movie with a Desert Storm backdrop, the movie retains the World War II story line of a stranded British American military unit facing the oncoming Nazi army.

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Actors like Belushi haven’t been shy about taking roles played by the likes of Bogart, Gary Cooper or Burt Lancaster. Agents have been inquiring with NBC executives about casting their clients for “Elmer Gantry” and “The Rose Tattoo.”

“We have gotten a lot of calls from people who are pretty successful in films who’ve never done TV before,” says Lindy DeKoven, senior vice president for miniseries and movies at NBC. “These are challenging roles that perhaps they are not offered in features.”

A version of “Streetcar” on ABC in 1984 drew Ann-Margret and Treat Williams in the leads. The coming CBS version features Lange, on the heels of winning a best actress Oscar, and Baldwin, actors rarely seen on TV.

Glenn Jordan, who produced and directed the new “Streetcar,” sees a difference in remaking a movie that had a stage play as its origin. While Elia Kazan made “Streetcar” in 1951, much of the racier dialogue from the play was deleted because of censorship. The new version sticks closely to the stage script.

“If someone said, ‘Would you like to remake “Casablanca” or “Rebecca”?’ I would say ‘No,’ ” Jordan says. “On the other hand, a play is something else. A great play should be done all the time, over and over again.”

Producer Robert Halmi Sr. plans to remake as many as a half-dozen Neil Simon plays. It just so happens that the first, “The Sunshine Boys” on CBS next season, was made into a movie that won Burns an Oscar.

“I’m not trying to compete with the original,” Halmi says. “After a certain amount of time, the TV audience has never seen ‘The Sunshine Boys.’ It is time to revisit. My ‘Sunshine Boys’ will be seen by 10 times the number of people in the first night.”

Simon updated the play for Halmi, primarily to delete dated material. The Allen and Falk characters will be younger than in the original; instead of a pair of ex-vaudevillians, they simply will be comedians whose heyday was in the 1950s and ‘60s. “These could be guys from ‘Laugh-In,’ ” Halmi says.

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Likewise, ABC’s series of family movies have only the premises in common with the originals.

“Freaky Friday,” which in 1977 starred Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster as the mother-daughter tandem who switch personalities, was totally rewritten for Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann. In the original, Harris played a housewife whose husband worked. In the new version, Long is a divorced, working mom.

“The only thing that is the same is mother and daughter change places on Friday the 13th,” says Melanie Mayron, the “thirty-something” star who directed the movie. “You can’t compare it. This is much more sophisticated, character comedy.”