Hollywood abandons reality in its top films for 2004 with cartoon madmen hell-bent on world domination, men in skirts, and the weather becoming a weapon of mass destruction.

Steve Pratt looks at the coming attractions.

You don't need a crystal ball to know what's going to happen in the coming year. The greenhouse effect and global warming will result in hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of the next Ice Age.

Men in skirts will emerge from their hiding place in a big wooden horse and thump the living daylights out of their enemies. A posh woman in a pink car will help a family of square-jawed airborne heroes save the world from a fate worse than death. And a man in a skin-tight red and blue suit will battle an evil reptile called The Lizard.

Hollywood, as made clear by the plots of 2004's big movies, is. determined to steer clear of real life in favour of reel life in which bomb-bearing terrorists are replaced by over-the-top madmen bent on world domination and the only weapons of mass destruction are swords and the weather.

If a talking fish and a pirate wearing too much mascara could become the biggest screen stars of 2003, then who's to say that a paleoclimatologist - a scientist who studies weather patterns - and a skirt-wearing Brad Pitt can't emerge victorious in coming months.

Last year, film ticket sales in North America fell for the first time since 1991. Figures were down by 0.5 per cent, which is peanuts when you consider the total take was $9.275bn. Twenty-five films made more than $100m in the US - and that's where it counts as the most films in our cinemas arrive from that side of the Atlantic.

The 2003 results are too late to influence what's released this year, but will be reflected in projects greenlit, or not, in coming months. With the return of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Batman and James Bond already scheduled for next year, any real difference won't be noticeable until 2006 and beyond.

What the studios and producers learnt from last year's hits is that you can't be sure of anything. The top-grossing films, Finding Nemo and Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, were both originals that were hits with audiences of all ages.

The final part of Peter Jackson's magnificent The Lord Of The Rings trilogy looks set to eclipse its predecessors at the box office, but The Matrix trilogy limped to a disappointing conclusion. Sequels in general suffered with second instalments, such as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Lara Croft: The Cradle Of Life, failing to produce the expected big returns.

The 2004 schedule certainly looks lighter on second and third helpings. The distributors of Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azakaban are making audiences wait for the third film until June, and have employed a different director to keep the franchise fresh.

Tobey Maguire swings back into action as Spider-Man to fight off The Lizard. Shrek 2 continues the CGI animation boom that helped Finding Nemo to an amazing $340m take in the US.

The second volume of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill concludes the bloody revenge drama with Uma Thurman wielding her Samurai sword. Swords are going to be big as Hollywood catches epic fever in a delayed reaction to the Oscar and box office success of Gladiator. While its North-East born director Ridley Scott is filming Crusade with hot British actor Orlando Bloom, two other sword-and-sandal adventures are competing for audiences.

First into cinemas will be the $200m Troy, which director Wolfgang Petersen describes as "one of the biggest productions in modern film history". Brad Pitt and Bloom have been recruited to ride the wooden horse in a bid to overcome the reluctance of today's young cinemagoers to stories about men in skirts and featuring a cast of thousands.

Competition comes at the end of the year from Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins in Alexander which, being directed by Oliver Stone, could put a controversial spin on the story of the man they called Great. By the time he died aged 33, he'd conquered most of the known world.

More swordplay as producer Jerry Brockheimer hopes to do for the Arthurian legend what he did for swashbuckling buccaneers in Pirates Of The Caribbean with his new film King Arthur. He has Pirates' leading lady, Keira Knightley, alongside Clive Owen, still be tipped as a future James Bond, in Camelot.

The action adventure honours could be snapped up by Van Helsing.

Predictions are tricky. Look how everyone was caught out when poor advance word put the mockers on the until-then eagerly anticipated The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But Van Helsing has much going for it, not least star Hugh Jackman, alias X-Men's Wolverine. His monster hunter goes solo to battle Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man. If director Stephen Sommers brings the same breathless rush to this as he did to his two Mummy movies, this could be very good indeed.

No year is complete without an end-of-the-world movie and The Day After Tomorrow - the one with all the bad weather mentioned at the start - comes from the director of Independence Day. In that, the world was invaded by aliens from outer space. This time the world's climate is the problem and Dennis Quaid's weatherman is the only one who can save the world.

As director Roland Emmerich says: "I'm so sick and tired of having enemies that can be defeated really easily. This was really nice because it's nature. What can you do against nature? You're helpless."

The closest the British industry could come to a blockbuster is through the live action version of cult puppet series Thunderbirds. Much talked about and long-delayed, the film was finally made with American Jonathan Frakes, from Star Trek: Next Generation, at the helm. It's hoped his influence will help make the movie US-friendly. Lady Penelope's pink car will be familiar but most of the actors, apart from Ben Kingsley's villainous The Hood, won't be.

The year's other big TV spin-off is another project that's been on and off for the past few years, Starsky And Hutch. If it doesn't deliver, planned adaptations of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Dukes Of Hazzard may be consigned to the bin. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson step into the shoes of David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser, who make cameo appearances in the big screen version.

The most intriguing idea is a US remake of the 1950s Ealing comedy The Ladykillers starring Alec Guinness. Unnecessary perhaps, but with Indie darlings the Coen brothers behind it and Tom Hanks starring, it might just be worth the effort.

Inevitably, the setting has switched from London to America - New Orleans, to be precise - but the prospect remains an intriguing one. Just as long as it doesn't start a trend of Americans re-mastering old British comedies for 2005.