Will they fly?

Call it trilogy deprivation: As soon as Hollywood finishes mourning that we’ve seen the last of “The Lord of the Rings,” moviemakers and -goers can start wrapping their heads around 2004’s offerings.

With last year’s dip in box office, the studios simply want better news. But estimating the year is as pointless as trying to guess what peripatetic movie star Bill Murray will make next. (Would anyone have guessed voicing a cartoon cat -- this summer’s “Garfield” -- after the indie goodwill from “Lost in Translation”?)

And for that matter, did anyone figure last January that “Lost in Translation” would be the talk of 2003? Or that fewer and fewer people would ultimately care whether the city of Zion was saved from the machines? (FYI: For the happily forgetful, that’s a reference to “The Matrix Revolutions.”) And maybe Miramax is looking for a kind of prank-ish record: most years in a row with published stories promising “Prozac Nation” will be released.

More fun it’ll be, then, to just cast a wide glance and allow yourself to get excited at the potential for quality or wince at the brazen audience-pandering in store. Because to be shocked that there will be lots of sequels, big family films, glittering stars, critical darlings, out-of-nowhere surprises and flop after flop after flop is to have wondered whether “The Return of the King” would open big its first weekend.

All right, maybe some things in Hollywood are givens.

For one thing, there’s the boon for Jude Law and Naomi Watts fans. The pair are in four movies each this year, and one they share: the existential corporate romp “I {heart} Huckabees.”

The newest breed of critically acclaimed movie star, these two are comfortable going up-market or downscale. Law can be found in the ‘30s-style adventure flick “Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow,” heading the “Alfie” remake, playing Errol Flynn in “The Aviator” and one of the foursome in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of the play “Closer.” Watts, meanwhile, has the adultery tale “We Don’t Live Here Anymore,” the sequel “The Ring 2” and the dramas “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” and “Stay.”

A few other stars will have high-profile years ahead too. Tom Hanks returns in three films: the Coen brothers’ remake of the Ealing comedy “The Ladykillers,” this summer’s “The Terminal” and the CGI family extravaganza “The Polar Express.” Kirsten Dunst also has a trio, with the Charlie Kaufman-scripted “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the “Spider-Man” sequel and the romance “Wimbledon.”

Will Ferrell is following his bang-up 2003 with the ‘70s male chauvinism comedy he co-wrote called “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” Woody Allen’s new film “Melinda and Melinda,” the drama “Winter Passing” and a soccer comedy with Robert Duvall. And the ever-busy Nicole Kidman boasts a quartet in the controversial Cannes hit “Dogville,” the reincarnation drama “Birth,” the Frank Oz-directed remake of “The Stepford Wives” and the Sydney Pollack U.N. thriller “The Interpreter.”

After a strange lack of directors-above-the-title last year, 2004 will unveil a pack of established heavyweights with new films. Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone trot out their big-budget biographies of Howard Hughes (“The Aviator”) and Alexander the Great (“Alexander”), respectively; Steven Spielberg gives us the quirky, fact-based immigrant yarn “The Terminal”; critical favorite Michael Mann has Tom Cruise playing a hit man in “Collateral”; and Steven Soderbergh attempts a sequel with “Ocean’s Twelve.”

Among the European masters with new work, there’s Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education” and -- in what is Ingmar Bergman’s last motion picture in any medium -- the made-for-television “Saraband.”

There are iconoclastic masters afoot too, with more modest budgets but possibly edgier sensibilities, from David O. Russell (“I {heart} Huckabees”) to satirist Alexander Payne with the road trip comedy “Sideways” to Jim Jarmusch and his long-in-the-works diner meditation “Coffee and Cigarettes.”

When it comes to reeling in bucks at the box office, though, Hollywood likes to bank as many commercial pros as they can too, and this year the golden box-office sensibilities of Stephen Sommers (“Van Helsing”), M. Night Shyamalan (“The Village”) and Robert Zemeckis (“The Polar Express”) will be on display as well. As for whether less mainstream filmmakers paired with a high-profile franchise can make for a happy marriage, the releases of “Y Tu Mama Tambien” director Alfonso Cuaron’s “Harry Potter” film (the series’ third) and “Bloody Sunday” director Paul Greengrass’ “The Bourne Supremacy” will tell.

Other questions:

Will period epic fatigue doom pictures like “The Alamo” and “Troy”? Will period epic-and-controversy fatigue hurt Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”? What about J.Lo burnout’s effect on the remake “Shall We Dance” and the drama “An Unfinished Life”?

Who will claim the throne as filmdom’s teen princess: Lindsay Lohan (“Mean Girls,” “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen”), the Olsen twins (“New York Minute”) or Hilary Duff (“A Cinderella Story”)?

Can DreamWorks rev up its family slate again with the computer-animated “Shrek 2” and “Shark Tale” and combat Disney/Pixar’s “The Incredibles”? Will kiddie lit stalwarts “The Polar Express” and “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” get film versions that please their legions of fans?

How will new specialty arm Warner Independent Pictures fare when its first release, the Richard Linklater film “Before Sunset,” hits theaters in June?

Can the ever-iffy, often-controversial biopic genre get a boost from the Kevin Kline-as-Cole Porter musical “DeLovely,” Liam Neeson playing sexpert Alfred Kinsey, Johnny Depp as “Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie in “Neverland,” and Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin in “Beyond the Sea”?

Does Viggo Mortensen have marquee power post-”Rings” to make the family epic “Hidalgo” an instant hit? Is there post-wedding bliss for Nia Vardalos with the “Some Like It Hot” tweak “Connie & Carla”?

Answers to the above won’t be available until a year from now. But if you’re still pining for “The Lord of the Rings,” then you’re on your own.